Recording - What card to buy?

[lasse]

I want to record the sound from some of my old vinyl records and some TV-programs and I would like to replace my 12 USD sound card with something slighly better.
Any ideas?

 

[SoulReaper]

Any sound card will work. just as long as you have the right cable. I suggest the SoundBlaster live because it's one of the best our there. Pick up a 3.5mm to 2 RCA cable at radio shack. Thats all you should need.

"upgrading is no longer an option...it's a necessity"
Visit www.elitehunters.com
--SoulReaper =)

 

[Guest]

Really good audio cards are expensive, however, SB Live products are nothing in comparison. I have been reproducing vinyl records into CD's for quite some time now. I use Event Electronic Layla, but you wouldn't need one this expensive. They have a card called Darla that would do a really nice job. They also have a new MIA card that will be released soon for under $250.00. Check out www.echoaudio.com and also look at www.tracertek.com. Tracertek has some very good software and hardware for what you want to do.

 

[Guest]

I have a recording situation where I tape a weekly FM radio program four hours in length on a Sony Beta Hi-Fi VCR (quality is higher than that of an audio cassette, yet not quite CD quality). I want to transfer the audio from the VCR tape to CDs. I do not yet have a CD burner and the sound card in my PC is an inexpensive generic. I am trying to figure out whether to just buy an audio CD recorder (such as Phillips or Marantz or several other audio equipment brands offer) and then transfer 74 (or 80) minutes of program at a time to an audio CD/R, or try and do it via sound card and CD burner on the PC. My lack of experience with PC sound cards and software are such that I need to know about the size of files when doing audio in a high quality format (.WAV, I think). For instance, does 74 minutes of audio from the analog source (VCR tape) create a .WAV file of a size which will directly transfer and fit onto a 74 minute CD? Same for 80 minutes? If I can take an 80 minute segment of analog audio and dump it to my hard drive and then transfer to an 80 minute CD, then it seems that 3 CDs would cover a 4 hour program. I'm suspecting that it isn't as easy as that. Any guidance would be very much appreciated.

 

[Guest]

Buy a SBlive value for $40. Get your burner. Hook your audio to the input on the SB card. Record your 4 hour program in .WAV format. (Hopefully you have a good size hard drive- if not, get one.) Use a utility program to convert the .WAV file to MP3 format. Burn it all on one CD. Now, if you want to listen to this in your car, you'll need to segment the show into maybe 1 hr increments, and burn 4 separate CDs. But you will have your entire file archived in the MP3 format on one disk, so you can cut it up later at your leisure, and not fill up your hard drive. I've done it many times, works like a charm. MP3 and wave formats are nearly indistinguishable. Good luck.

 

[Guest]

DaveE,

I've recorded several concerts from radio to CD, it's quite easy once you get used to it.

You're spot on about a 74 minute tape segment being a 74 minute wav and thus a 74 minute CD.

CD audio rate is 44100Hz, 16bit stereo. Any decent audio software will support this (Goldware, CoolEdit etc).

You'll obviously need plenty of drive space - the datarate is around 172Kb/s, so an hour of audio is going to be about 605Mb (i.e. approx 2.4Gb for a 4 hour program).

Ok... now do this:

1. Set your audio software up to record and let it sample the entire program - you'll get a complete copy at CD (well, FM) quality on your hard drive. Obviously you can do this from a pre-recorded tape, or straight from your FM source for even better quality.

2. Cut the program into 74 (or 80) minute segments and save as several .wav files. Note that you can use most recording software to add fade in/out at the start/end of each CD.

3. Use any decent CDR software to burn each .wav file AS AN AUDIO CD. Remember not to burn it as a data CD or you'll end up with an ISO format disk with a wav file on it.

Stilldog makes a good point about mp3'ing the program. At 160Kbit/s (a decent MP3 rate) you should easily get the 4:1 compression you'd need to fit the whole concert on one CD. Remember that you'd have to burn that as an ISO data CD and you could only play it on a PC or a CD player that understands MP3 files. WARNING: some CDR software can use MP3's to make audio CDs (decompressing the MP3 and writing the audio data on the fly). Obviously if you did this then it would try to write a 4 hour audio CD... i.e it ain't gonna work.

A couple of final thoughts:

1. Make sure you get your line-in levels right (I've set them too high once and ended up with distortion on the loud bits).

2. If you're low on drive space you could record using 32000Hz, or even 22050Hz. The quality is not as good (though probably OK for FM sources) and many CDR programs can handle audio files that aren't 44100Hz (they resample them to create a CD image).

3. Some CDR software allows you to use a single audio file and set track markers - e.g. with CDRWin you can create a CUE file, setting the start times of each track within a program. The end result in a seamless live set that allows you to skip to each track (just like a commercial live CD).

4. When you start a recording, some software (like CoolEdit) asks you how long your recording will be, and creates a file ready to store the data. This takes a while but is a good idea. Software like Goldwave seems to try and find disk space as you record, and if you end up with some disk thrashing the recording process can suffer (you get 'jumps' as it stops recording for short periods).

Hope that helps...

Sploo.

PS Unless you're a serious audio buff then any reasonable sound card will be fine. Also, you wouldn't need a top of the line CD burner as writing audio data is pretty simple for most burners.