[IRCA] OT: Re Cassettes

["Konnie Rychalsky" <dxbox87@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>What to do with the cassettes?  Probably trash them, as I don't
>have infinite storage space.

Charles,
I should have written earlier to suggest when playing back cassettes - stop 
the player before the end of each cassette to prevent breaking.

Don't throw the cassettes away!  Now that you have copied the material down, 
you might consider revisiting the cassettes, or have someone else do it, to 
extract a better quality sound.  In the recording industry, recorders are 
calibrated and then archived along with the master tapes, for play-back in 
the future (at least the major houses did pre-digital.)  Although I'm not 
familiar with the cassette player you used for play back, there are two 
additional "home brew" quickies to consider...which I've done myself with 
older cassettes from the 70's.  To prevent "play back noise" I use a more 
expensive stereo-cassette deck, and record onto a multi-track 
digital-mixer-program as two seperate channels.  I've found that there are 
cassettes, that when originally recorded on a mono portable, are not equal 
on both channels - and the noise off either channel can be eliminated.  An 
adjustable play back head is also helpful.  This avoids two sources for 
noise, the playback machine and the originally recorded noise on the 
cassette.  Been there, done that, and at times does in fact make a 
difference - especially those cassettes that may have given you some 
trouble.  I had some cassettes that won't play on a lower priced player, but 
worked just fine as desribed above.  Also, cleaning the playback heads after 
each single cassette side also prevented a muffled sound - in some cases I 
had to digitally splice the material together in the mixer, due to the old 
cassettes flaking down and collecting onto the heads.

At pennies a piece, always consider making a duplicate CD of each recording 
as a master & Master-copy (do you really want to revisit the cassettes 
again?)  but that depends on how much you value what you have and wish to 
preserve them.  Besides, copies on anyone's computer are prone to a crash 
and loss.  Once you've stored your wave files, you can always convert to any 
hardware in the future (DVD, bluewave, etc.) and make mp3s for listening 
now.  I also avoid adding labels to CDs for warpage (over time).  Memorex 
CDs netted 100 out of 100, however the clear coating to the silver is quite 
vulnerable to flaking; I ended up converting to a silkscreened coated HP CD 
& DVD and use a non-pointed sharpie to ID/mark the surface:  HP DVDs are 
100% thus far, and a new package of CD-R are currently 1 bad out of the 
first 20.

Finally, once you've revisted a "clean" digital base, them you can have 
someone play with the levels.  So when can we purcahse the collection?

73s,
Konnie
SW CT

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