Converting reel-to-reel audio to digital format

1. nobody
   Member

   
   We have 25 year old reel-to-reel audio tapes that we want to convert to digital cd's for archival preservation.
   
   It this possible?
   What equipment is necessary?
   Are there companies which specialize in such conversions?
   
   Charles Heath

   Posted 8 years ago #

2. nobody
   Member

   
   This is a fairly straightforward process. All you need is a PC with a sound card and a CD burner. If you don't have a CD burner, Lite-On has a line of high quality, fast, low cost units. If your tape deck doesn't have a preamp, you may need that also to boost the signal for the sound card's Line In, although I've been told that some have used tape head out to microphone in, to avoid the need for a preamp.
   
   I have found the Roxio Easy CD Creator (ver. 6 is the latest, but I still use ver. 5) to be about as easy as any software for handling the whole capture-cleanup-edit-burn cd process. Read the manual, of course, but what you do is select a source, then select a destination--which will normally be a WAV file. The software has settings for automatically breaking between songs for a new file, or you can start and stop manually. Roxio's Sound Stream, included with ECDC, allows some cleanup of the incoming source. It also has a sound editor, in case you need to trim some silence from the beginning or end of the file. Finally, you use the CD burner part of the software to create the CD.
   
   This is essentially the same way you would convert your old vinyl records to CD, as I have done with some of my old "classics" that were never popular enough to be re-released on CD. Sound Stream also has some cleanup features for old records.
   
   Hope this helps.
   
   Regards,
   Bill

   Posted 8 years ago #

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