I'm about to archive all of my old cassette tapes into mp3s, and I'm wondering what setting I should use. Since cassettes are noticeably less detailed in sound quality compared to CDs, it would make sense that I should encode using a lower setting and still capture all the details in a cassette. I'm currently using VBR quality 0, minimum 192 bitrate, and I think that's probably overkill for capturing cassettes. Any suggestions?

I should also mention that after I capture the cassettes into mp3s, I'll also be remastering them with highend audio softwares to improve the sound quality. Conventional wisdom would dictate that I should just use lossless methods to capture the cassettes, but like I mentioned earlier, lossless would be even more extreme of an overkill for cassettes.

You should use lossless until after you've done any restoration of the audio. If you record the casettes to mp3, then decode them to do any editing, then re-encode them, the extra encoding passes (transcoding) could introduce uneccessary artifacts.

You should use one of the built-in lame presets for encoding. The medium or standard presets should be fine.

The problem is, I have about 90 cassettes to do, and ripping at lossless will mean I'd run out of hard drive room real quick. I could try to hold as much data as I can, then remaster those and encode them into mp3s to make more room for the next batch. However, my remastering skills are always improving, and I'm always discovering new mastering plugins and methods, so I should keep the original lossless files around in case I want to give them another shot down the line. I did some rough calculation--at about 90 cassettes, 13 songs per side, roughtly 28 MB per lossless encoding with something like Monkey Audio, I'd end up with over 30 GB of data, which I can archive onto 9 DVDs. I guess that's not TOO bad?

You could also try using a non-psychoaccoustic audio codec for your source files (like Wavpack's lossy mode).
Processing those shouldn't be as bad quality-wise as processing MP3s.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'l give Wavpack a try, but I'd like to hear other people's feedback on it if possible.

It's of course a matter of hearing at taste, but my proposal for finally encoding casette-tapes would be preset medium / -V4. No additional switches needed.

But as others already pointed out: encoding to mp3, then decompressing, working with the technically damaged data, and then reencoding again is a bad idea. Maybe try to buy a cheap used hdd for the task - something like 20gb should already be enough to store them in lossless until you finished the editing. If that is not an option, then i've got to agree with dev0.

- Lyx

edit: if you own a DVD-burner, then this may be another solution - burn them in lossless to DVD for archival and later remastering.

Whatever codec you use, you may as well use a lowpass of 15kHz as there won't be anything useful above that.

It strikes me that there have been at least a couple of threads (like e.g. this one) covering almost the exact same question. Have you actually taken the trouble to search for them?

I have done this several times. Particularly, I have around 50 cassettes that I am recording little by little to digital.

I record first the wavs, edit and clean them. After I burn to data CD (I don't have a DVD burner yet, only CD burner) to store them.

After I can convert them to mp3 or vorbis for a DAP or personal use, I use Lame 3.96.1 with -V2 setting (--preset standard) with excellent results.

Please don't store the music in mp3 or another lossy format. Transcode of a lossy is a very bad idea. You can store your wavs in DVD discs; or maybe encoded them with a lossless codec, and after burn to DVD.

Does anyone know what frequency responses are those for cassette tapes (for normal tapes, not highend metal tapes)? The way I see it, when I archive CDs, I use highest VBR quality with 192 bitrate as minimum, and I honestly cannot hear the difference between that and the original .wav file, even on my Senneiser HD555, which is about 95% as good as the HD950. So, with that in mind, that's why I'm thinking my current encoding setting should be plenty for archiving cassette tapes. Sure, I'll probably try to remaster those mp3s later down the line, but the argument of working with "damaged" files from compression doesn't seem to make any real life differences, because it's not like cassette tapes carried any incredible details that got lost in the compression in the first place. In fact, the compression setting I use is more than likely overkill for cassette tapes already? Does anyone agree with that?

polar - sorry, I should've checked first.

That'll be something like 60-15,500 Hz.

If the cassette were recorded in a very good cassette deck the frequency response is around 17Khz or 18 Khz (normal tapes). If the cassette deck was a standard recorder the frequency response is around 15 Khz or 16 Khz (normal tapes).

You could consider a frequency response around 17 khz in average for these cassettes.

I found that Audacity's backround hiss removal produced weird twinkling sounds on live stuff recorded at 160 kbs mono mp3. I think this is because some processes will rely on inaudible details to do what they do - the kind of inaudible details that lossy encodings loose.

You have a point there about the inaudible stuff being important too.

Ok, I'm trying out Wavpack and I absolutely don't see the point of the Hybrid mode. The correction file together with the WV file adds up to about the same size as the lossless version anyway, so what's the point??

It depends on your will to keep the correction file.