Transferring cassette tapes to my Mac

[macstatic]

I have lots of cassette tapes I've recorded myself which I'd like to transfer over to my Mac. How would you suggest I do this?
I already have an audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett 18i20) which should be better suited than my Mac Pro's built-in inputs.
Some specific questions:

1) audio format/specs to choose? I intend to rid myself of the tapes once done, so best possible quality, but without wasting file space unnecessarily of course.
2) do I need to limit the sound somehow, or are cassettes already limited (no pun intended) so as to avoid spikes? How do I set up the recording level for the best possible quality but without overloading?
3) suggested software (MacOS 10.13 or lower)? Is there a way to automatically split recordings into separate files (detecting silences between recordings)?

 

[blakedirksen]

Never done this, but here is how I would start.

Get a decent cassette player, (is that an oxymoron?) Try to split the right and left outs into different inputs on your focusrite interface so you have the right and left channels separated.

I use Logic but I assume the same functionality is in Garageband. Pan the left track fully left and the right track fully right. Now you should have a stereo mix in your DAW that matches the cassette.

You are going to have to be careful with levels. The cassettes will have been mastered but since you are taking the signal through a whole bunch of "stuff" you are going to have to be strategic. I like to keep my tracks about -9db for tracking. Once that is done you will have to adjust the output up till you get to about 0 with no peaks. I assume you don't want to get into remastering the audio yourself to keep the tracks as "original" as you can. You can normalize when you bounce the tracks if you trust apple to do it for you (it isn't awful).

Once you are pleased with the recording, bounce the tracks to a file. A .wav file will sound the best but is bigger. I would just do an MP3 since cassettes don't sound great anyway. Up to you. I would figure out the times in the one long album track between songs and when you "bounce" down to an MP3, you can pick the start and stop points so you will have individual songs. I don't know an automated way to do this.

Best of luck!

 

[macstatic]

Thanks. Yes, I suppose just about any DAW or 2-channel audio recording app (Audacity etc.) will do, but it would save me an awful lot of work if it would detect any silence and automatically chop those recordings into separate files.

As for levels: these aren't pre-recorded tapes, but various stuff I've recorded myself, thus levels might fluctuate. The problem is figuring out the highest level of the whole cassette tape (I thought my tape deck had a peak level detection feature, but that was probably on a CD player I once had), so I might just have to keep things lower than 0dB and normalize after that. And you're probably quite right about cassettes not sounding fantastic in any case, so perhaps I'm just putting too much into this

But a limiter would help in the situations where a seldom peak is detected, as opposed to recording the entire tape at a lower level than necessary?

You're probably right about choosing MP3 as the file format as well, but at which setting (bitrate, resolution etc.) to avoid getting any audible loss while not using unnecessary storage space?

 

[blakedirksen]

I am not familiar with any tools that automatically detect and split audio like you suggest, but bouncing a section is pretty easy and you should be able to see the silence between tracks pretty clearly.

I would keep things below 0dB and then either normalize when you bounce, or put a limiter on the master channel strip and turn the gain up till you see it start to activate at the loudest part. Good rule of thumb is to set the limiter to -0.3dB and and your limiter should almost NEVER engage. This WILL change the feel and tone of your tracks so that will be up to your taste.

I bounce at a bitrate of 192kbs for stereo. If you are worried about space, try bouncing a track with different bitrates and listening. For different genres you may not notice a difference. There are a LOT of very strong opinions about this but it is your music, so try a few settings and see if you like the sound.

 

[macstatic]

Good tips about limiting. I'll spend some time checking out several workflows/options before actually going through all my tapes. There's a lot of individual tracks there, so I'd rather figure out any issues beforehand.

By "bouncing", do you mean "transfer to digital"?
I'll try out 192 Kbps first, then go up and down from there and see if I notice any difference from the source material. And that's a good point about different genres making it more or less noticeable.

I just found out that Twisted Wave (which I already have a license for) says it can detect silences and split the recording into individual files! I never knew this, so I'm going to check it out.

 

[blakedirksen]

Yes, to "bounce" something is to take it from your DAW software and convert it to a digital audio file.

 

[groove-agent]

I'd run a RCA to 1/4" (unbalanced) cable to your Scarlett. I believe it will accept unbalanced cables. Make sure the input gain on both inputs are the same.

If you create a stereo recording track it will auto-pan left and right. Manually panning is if you record using two mono channels.

Record at a decent level without it clipping (distorting) and normalize as another person has suggested in this thread. I wouldn't limit as it could change the dynamics of the song (if that matters) and software limiting is useless as you can't un-clip the overs.

As for recording format, 192 kHz seems excessive unless you plan on doing a lot of processing. I personally would do it at 24 bit, 44.1k. You could make a few recordings using different depths and sample rates and see if you can hear a difference in a blind test. For MP3 settings, I personally find 160Kbps a nice balance between sound quality and disk space.

 

[kucharsk]

Disk space is cheap, no reason not to do it at 24/192 unless it is destined only for use as source for an MP3.