(no subject)

[42itous]

Can someone please give me a clue as to how to transfer an audio tape to a digital medium? Specifically, I have taped an interview that I want to place in five time capsules -- most of these will be opened in the next decade or so, but one needs to last 43 years, so if you want to debate what media will still be readable then, now's your chance.

Comments

[zzbottom.livejournal.com]

Well, I know you can get a cord that will plug into the headphone jack of the master device, and into the mic jack of the digital recording device (Radio Shack or Micro Center should have one) and you can record just like speaking into a microphone on your computer or other digital recording device. From there you can convert to whatever sound file you'd like.

As for what's going to last 43 years, I have zero clue. You might call someone at, say, Emerson, where they have a good sound engineering department and pose the question there.

[moechus.livejournal.com]

I suspect that most media will last that long. I have lots of vinyl that I still play that's older than that and I heard a story on the radio (must have been NPR) in the last week or two about a tape of the radio call of a Sandy Koufax no-hitter (early 60s) that just turned up in the back of someone's closet. I'm pretty sure it was the old fashioned reel-to-reel tape. I wouldn't be surprised if some analog media (e.g. unplayed vinyl) outlasted at least some digital media.

ask a digital librarian...

[athene.livejournal.com]

it's what I'm all about...

what you need is an analog to digital converter to go between the tape player and the computer. I'm not sure where these can be found other than at digitization labs.

You'll then need the software to record the audio. For the PC, Sony's Sound Forge is a pretty good program. You can DL a fully functional trial version. There's also Audacity which is Open Source and is for both Mac and PC, but I find it a little tricky to use.

In terms of formatting, you should probably go with open-source, lossless format. Of course formats change very quickly, but if it's open-source then there is a good chance that it will be able to be migrated or emulated. The best way to make sure of this would be to leave a set of analog (paper) instructions about how it was digitized, what program, and was type of music file it is. That way when they find it they can go back and try to either migrate or emulate it in concurrence with practices at the time.

I could ask my friends who are in the "Intro to Audio Preservation" course for even more information if you are interested.

Can you tell that this is stuff i want to be doing??

More resources:

This is the page/walkthrough that we used in my digitzation class when we did audio digitzation (http://www.jasonmolin.net/projects/audio_digitization/).

These are the readings for the digitization class (http://courses.ischool.utexas.edu/megan/2007/Spring/INF385R/readings.php#audio).

[volta]

Analog tape to digital is not too hard, if you have a computer with audio in (virtually every computer made in the last 10 years does), and a tape deck with audio out. For media longevity, high quality digital tape, properly stored, can reliably be expected to last ~30 years without maintenance. Typical consumer-grade recordable CD/DVD media, not so much; 10 years at the outside, in near ideal conditions. Archival-grade recordable CD/DVD media should last longer, but I do not know if 43 years is within the design spec even on that. A "pressed" CD should outlast any recordable media easily, as would an analog record. Analog audio tape will almost certainly still be playable in 50 years, though the quality will likely have degraded noticably--I have some reel-to-reel tape that is nearly that old, stored in less-than-optimal conditions, and is still playable.

[merilisa.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this! I found an audiotape of my Oma and Opa from 25 years ago and I was thinking that if it wasn't too late, we would transfer it...and I had no idea how. Thanks!

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I have a toy (http://gnomi.livejournal.com/307795.html) that does it very nicely (and the toy is relatively expensive).