Transfer cassette to digital file... best file type?

[FogCityMac]

With some help, ie, going to someone to do the transfer for me, I will be transferring a cassette tape to a digital file. I have a couple of questions:

1) What is the best file type to use? I want something that can be played on a Mac.

2) I may need to do some (simple) editing. For example, identifying a segment of the complete tape and saving that portion as another file. Does the typically loaded software on a MBP have something to help with this? If so, what is it? If not, is there an app I should get? This is for one tape and I do not believe I will have an on-going need for this.

Thanks for your help!

 

[BrianBaughn]

16 bit, 44.1kHz WAV files should be more than ample.

You can edit that with "Audacity", an excellent, free app.

 

[Fishrrman]

To add to what Brian said above, it can be _either_ a "WAV" file or an "aiff" file (also called "aif").

Both are CD quality "uncompressed" formats, and both can be easily edited with any audio app.

And again, you want 44.1khz, 16-bits.

NOTE: these files will be LARGE. Figure on 10mb of disk space per minute of recording.

If these files will be "listened to" on a regular basis after the transfer/editing (i.e., music), you might want to consider converting the edited files into high-bit mp3 format (192 or 256-bits). They will then consume a lot less space.