I have, I'm guessing, maybe one to two thousand or so cassettes, LPs and VHS tapes I would like to convert to digital. I'm thinking onto hard disk - maybe a few 1TB hard drives should hopefully be able to hold it all uncompressed (well maybe not the video, but if I have to compress it at all I'd want to be extremely conservative (for example, for audio, 320kbps mp3 or 512kbps ogg would be too low), preferably using lossless compression.)

As for the cassettes, I've heard the Nakamichi Dragon is a good quality cassette deck. Also I've read (online) that the 1000ZXL may actually be a better deck (but is more expensive). Thing is, if I don't have to, I would rather not spend that much on a player. What are some good tape decks in a few other price ranges? (And, what would be a good reason, in each range, to step up to the next higher tier?) Price tiers I'd be looking at are (approximately): $70, $120, $200, $320, $500, $750, $1200 or so. (I'd like to keep it below $200, which obviously would rule out the Dragon, but I'm thinking to get best results that would be too low, as the portable player I now have (Panasonic RQ-SW20), which is actually better than our in-home decks, is not nearly good enough (and it was $100 when new).
A couple features I would really like to have are auto azimuth correction, dual capstans, fine-tunable bias adjustment... and anything else I should look for?
Features that aren't necessary include any of the consumer convenience features, like auto-reverse, ability to record with the same deck, etc.
Also, for cutting out the hiss on tapes, is there any possible way to do that without losing any of the high frequency response?

As for the LPs and VHS... what would be good quality players for those? My current turntable is a Sony PS-242, and the 2 VHS players are a Sony SLV-798HF and Sony SLV-393 - would those be good quality?

Also, should I make sure I buy one in excellent working condition, or should I consider getting (cheaply) one that has problems and get it repaired?

Basically I would like to get as good of a quality transfer as possible -- if I can get it to be as good as the original masters (some of which may have been recorded over 50 to 60 years ago), that would be nice.

Another thing I was thinking about... with the quantity of analog media that I want to convert, which would be less expensive (assuming the same quality results), have a professional service do it, or buy good quality equipment (for cassettes, the Dragon or 1000ZXL) and do it myself?

Once I get everything converted, I plan to destroy the old analog media, so I'll want the transfers to be as high of a quality as possible, preferably as close as possible to the quality the original masters were when they were new.

(I'm searching my computer for some files I converted with less expensive equipment (to give an idea of some problems I'm trying to avoid) for a few sample clips to post. To whet your appetites (IF I ever find them / post them), there's one I can think of with some noticeable flutter (for example, hear a note played on a piano that you know is in tune and it flutters like 15 times per second), significant high frequency response loss (I have one that's pretty much down -60dB by about 5 kHz, and another that barely cracks 1 kHz), one where it probably was recorded from another tape (which I no longer have) in which the "original" tape got twisted over during playback, just to name a few things....))

P.S. I had an older similar topic a couple years ago, but other things came up and was unable to get anything done, and I had already tried resurrecting it, with no results.

I think your VHS decks are a good as any other provided they're working properly. I have a Nakamichi 580M cassette deck that while only a 2 head deck is an outstanding performer. When new it was flat to 22.5KHz and the wow / flutter was inaudible to me even with classical organ, piano or acoustic guitar. The dragon is really good but one of their 'lesser' decks is still fine hardware.

For turntables, I'm partial to Thorens or the upper end Dual semi autos mainly because of the way the cartridge force (not mass) is applied via springs rather than a 'controlled' imbalance. Unfortunately the Shure V15 type V is no longer available which IMO was the finest moving magnet cartridge ever built. It was the only cartridge upgrade I did that was FAR better than the others including Stantons, Pickerings, Shure V 15 type IV, B & O SP12. As for me, I only transfer LPs if the CD is not available.

For storing files, I use .FLAC to save some space though with 1 TB drives for $87 it's not much of an issue and as AFAIK there's no downside to .FLAC.

G²

What price range are you talking about on the turntables? Also for the vast majority of these LPs, CDs, AFAIK, are not available, and for a few that I DO have on CD the quality is noticeably inferior - for example they were too heavy handed on the noise reduction or did it improperly, among other things, and they often sound like an mp3 that was encoded at a not high enough bitrate.

What would be some things I should look for in the less expensive Nakamichis, and would they be good enough (for example preferably including on-the-fly auto azimuth correction) to get the quality transfers I'm hoping to get?
Also would I need to invest in a better sound input for my computer? It currently has a Realtek ALC889 onboard.
Or, if I don't get a Nakamichi, what would be something that would be many times better than the ones I now have access to? The players I now have are the Panasonic RQ-SW20 (portable walkman style), Sony TC-W550, Sony TC-FX420R, and Technics RS-B11W. None of them are even close to good enough, though -- for example, tape 1 might sound best on the portable Panasonic, then for tape 2 the first 15 minutes might sound best on the 420R, then for the next 8 minutes due to deficiencies in the recording every couple seconds it alternates between sounding best on the Panasonic and the Technics... then tape 3 might only have a 1 kHz response after a couple seconds of playback on the W550, but sound fine on the RQ-SW20...well you basically get the idea.... basically I want to avoid that, and have one player that plays the best quality possible. Should any Nakamichi deck, even if it's only $50-150 or so, be fine?

I almost forgot about reel-to-reel tapes. I don't know how many of those I have - maybe a couple hundred or so, possibly more or less idk. The player I have access to for those is a Teac A-4010 - is that a high quality one or should I consider investing in something better?

Due to budget constraints (one reason I really don't want to consider purchasing the Dragon, otherwise I'd have to increase my total budget (not to mention I also need a new cell phone (considering T-Mobile G1 - my Motorola A1200's earphone jack and non-speakerphone speaker don't work), mp3 player (considering Cowon O2 32GB - my 16GB Creative ZEN's screen is broken), PDA / netbook (don't have anything specific in mind, but it's time to get rid of my 12+-year-old graphing calculator that I used to use for similar purposes, and I don't want to give up any functionality)) by like 4 or 5 times just to get a non-functioning used one, or wait a few years to do the project), I either will have to do these projects one at a time, or would have to sacrifice the quality (which is an option I really do not want to consider, as I plan to destroy the originals once it's done. (If I have to choose one thing to work on now, it probably would be the standard 1/8" analog cassettes.)

Considering the quantity I need to do, is it less expensive to have it professionally done, or buy the equipment and do it myself? As for time... I'm not factoring in "lost wages" type time for doing it myself, but if I have a pro place do it would they possibly do like 100 different tapes at a time, whereas I can barely afford entry-level equipment to do one tape at a time?

I can't say anything about the ALC889, but I had a very disappointing experience with my own onboard sound chip (SoundMax 1986A). A simple test of "line input" quality revealed, that even with no source attached, Audacity would record a click/pop exactly every 30 seconds. The click/pop was clearly audible and visible in the sound sample. Might be driver related, but then again, there are no newer drivers. I've started to investigate this once I read about something similar in audacity's forums.
The same applied also when using different sampler.

To solve, I bought an external (having a notebook) E-MU (professional brand of Creative) sound device(which happened to be able to create 48V phantom power for the professional microphone I wanted to attach). The S/N ratio with this sound card (and mic) was over 60db.
Sampling with 24bit helped to keep detail also during silent parts - should you not guess the appropriate gain at the beginning.
And, most importantly, there were no clicks/pops any more.

I haven't played any cassettes in over 10 years and I'm not familiar with the specific Sony and Technics machines but I used to work on consumer audio LONG ago. Both Sony and Technics were good performers, I just found even modest Nakamichis to be great performers. The 580 M does not have auto azimuth but there is an easy acess hole to change it manually. Since I always aligned my machines properly and never used others (including pre-recorded) cassettes I never had a reason to alter it.

Your Teac 4010 is a very good though not great machine IMO. A Revox or Technics 1500 (?), Sony 850 or 755/756/758/788 will outperform it. Beware trhat your old open reel tapes may need to be baked to get the moisture out of them to keep them from sticking in the transport. Where I work we bake hundreds of tapes to make them play and have a 100% success rate so far.

I have 2 Gigabyte machines, one GA-MA78GM-S2H rev 1.1 and a GA-MA78GM-US2H both with ALC889 codecs. The S2H has a little interference of the video into the audio on playback. I estimate it at 70-80 dB down from peak. The US2H board has no detectable crosstalk so it varies by board. You'll just have to try it to hear if it's adequate.

Turntables are _very_ mechanical devices that require disassembly. cleaning and re-lubricating at times which would be my only 'worry' about buying a used one on ebay. If you're so inclined to do it yourself, you can get really good buys. The Technics 1200 is held in high regard. The tables I would avoid would be Garrards and BSRs. The Japanese manuals are generally very good but the automatics that I worked on were not pretty under the deck. I would avoid those too. These are strictly my opinions from doing repairs.

G²

In this day and age, I would seriously consider using lossless compression for serious archiving. FLAC comes to mind. Desktop hard drives are just too cheap - on the order of $100/terabyte. I would recommend building a PC with a moderate sized bootable drive and a RAID-5 array for music storage. Over the life of the data, you will probably change operating systems more than once.



You start out talking hardware, but this story really starts with you. If you are going to tackle a project like this by yourself you need to read up and train up. For example, among professionals who transcribe cassettes, their usual protocol may involve moving cassette tape packs to new shells, if the old ones are substandard or warped. They then manually adjust the azimuth of their transcription machine to each tape. Then they do the deed.

Then you need to do some seaching around and see what you can sift out of the professionals. For example there's a Mr. Adrian Tuddenham that I find on various Usenet groups who seems to have a lot of wisdom to share. Google him up!

Here is a comprehsensive document on the topic:

www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/sound/anaudio/analoguesoundrestoration.pdf




if you want a modern, high-performance, robust cassette deck, look to brands that sell to the "professional" of audio production market such as Tascam, Panasonic, and Marantz (Professional).



Auto-reverse is generally anathema for people interested in high quality cassette transcriptions.




That's a whole area of technology that is apparently new to you, the use of computer software tools for processing transcriptions. Adobe Audition is widely used (including by me) for this purpose because of its built-in tools for noise management.



I can't find a picture of the PS-242, but if memory serves, it was a good one. I'd pick up a new cartridge and stylus - like a Shure M897HE.

Only you know how well those VHS machines work, but they could be fine. The tricky part is video capture to the computer. There are a lot of video capture cards that use a separate audio interface, and they generally won't keep the sound in picture in synch over a period of 30 minutes or more. You want a video capture device that has audio capture built-in. USB video capture is generally frowned on. You also want some video editing/DVD burning software to manage your work and tidy things up. I use Adobe Premiere Elements, and it has built in menuing and burning, which not all video software does. Check with the software vendors for their recommendations about video capture.



I use an inexpensive off-the-shelf VHS recorder, and get good results. IME the newer VHS machines were about as good as it got.




Google up some of the online places that do transfers like this, and figure it out. For the volume of work you seem to have, it would probably be good for you to develop this skill for yourself. But, its very time-intensive because you have to transcribe vinyl and video in real time, and you'll be lucky to ready it for archiving with additional production time that is equal to playing time. So, figure a minimum of double playing time.

With the high number of transfers, you'll probably save money doing it yourself, since the equipment cost is divided among many programs. But, I suggest you do some investigation.

DIY really pays-off with audio "clean-up", especially with LPs. It's very time consuming (to do it right). And, sometimes you have to make judgements & compromise. It's better that you make the compromise decisions yourself.

Right! Uncompressed AVI is 65GB per hour. AVI/DV is 13GB per hour. DVDs are MPEG-2, and at 6000kbps MPEG-2, you need about 2.5GB per hour. And, you might want to make DVDs anyway... It's a standardized format (fairly future-proof) and might be more convenient for playback. You'll need more space if you want uncompressed audio. (Dolby AC3 is very good, and it takes-up almost no space compared to the video.)

I agree that with all of the effort and expense, your audio-only transfers should be lossless.

Sorry for not having read the whole thread. I'm doing VHS restoration for myself at the moment and what seems most important to me is to get a player that is outputting on S-Video cabling (many S-VHS recorders do so). The reason is that using a composite cable the luma and chroma information is transferred inseparably over that one wire while using S-Video transfers luma and chroma information separately.

You may also want to visit the doom9-Forums for lots of knowledge about video editing and filtering for restoration.

For VHS > digital, visit videohelp.com, especially the capturing and restoration forums. Main point: you need a TBC in the transfer path somewhere.

Visit the doom9 forums if you want to improve the captured video using AVIsynth or VirtualDub. This is a time consuming process.


Unless the tapes were recorded on something spectacular, silly priced equipment like a Dragon is overkill.


There are lots of threads about LP>CD - use search, see the FAQ, and find cliveb's posts.


It would be criminal to destroy decent LPs.

It's seems environmentally criminal to dump VHS + cassette tapes (they'll be either burnt or sent to land fill - both are bad solutions for these plastics!), but I don't know of anyone who is recycling them properly at no cost.


I think you should be selective in what you keep. 2000 hours just for the initial transfer, not including preparation, filtering, and copying to new media. That's a lot of your life to give up.

Cheers,
David.

Considering the very low chroma resolution of VHS, gains in using s-video over composite are questionable. However, S-VHS VCRs are usually built to a much higher standard and some later high-end models have built-in TBCs (time base correctors - very helpful) and noise reduction features. Don't bother with new VCRs - they are generally cheaply made (same goes for most VHS/DVD combos) and no one makes good high-end models any more. The last proper high-end consumer VCRs were launched around 2000, such as the JVC HR-S7000 and S9000 series. Panasonic had good top of the range models too (not sure what was available in the US), Sony probably did as well.

You should be able to get a good condition late model consumer deck for around $100-200. Professional decks in full working order can go up to around $500 on eBay, though there's also play-only professional VCRs (e.g. the Panasonic AG-7150 is the same as the 7350 except it doesn't record) that should be a bit cheaper and suit your needs.

As the others said Doom9 and videohelp.com are great resources for video stuff.