FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Track Recording Studio

Question:
Using 4 track recording studio and converting tape to digital through PC What's the best way for me to convert a recording made on a 4 track recording studio (on tape) to digital form?

Answer:
What kind of music are you recording. If it's fairly dense, loud distorted guitar, the task is easy. If it's a more open acoustic sound you're going to have some tape hiss. Although consumer sound cards are not adequate to receive CD quality sound,they work fine for cassette quality. Here's how to do it.You can mix directly to your sound card from your 4 track.( I usually mix to a DAT and then go from the DAT to the sound card, but it's not necessary.) Add compression in the mix if you have a compressor. (Alesis makes one for about $100 from the mailorder houses). Adjust the input level on your computer so that the loudest point is near 0 dB (the loudest possible in digital audio) but make sure you don't exceed it. Pushing your cassette tape to distortion can be a useful effect, but digital distortion just sounds like shit. Get a decent wave file editor. I use Cakewalk. The home studio version is adequate and costs about $90. Use the editor to trim the tape hiss off the beginning and end of the song (i.e. before you start playing and after you finish). Add a tight, fast fade from silence (at the start) and to silence (at the end). If the music is dense and loud, that's all you need to do to get it ready to go on CD. For open acoustic music you may want to remove the tape hiss. You may be able to do this with a gate, but this only works for silences of a second or so in the music. The hiss will still be audible as each note fades out. For my music, I just accept that I'm recording on cassete tape and let the sound of the tape be part of the sound. If you don't like that, there are programs available that can remove the hiss. Basically, the program listens to the hiss before the music starts and subtracts that from the rest of the tape. But there is a problem with it: If your home studio is like mine, it's not perfectly silent... The refrigerator is running and your roommate is talking in the other room, etc. These sound are below the noise floor on cassete tape, i.e. you can't hear them. But if you lower the noise floor with a program that subtracts tape hiss, they may become audible. It's amazing that this can happen, but it really does.