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audio cassettes
Sunday, November 27th, 2016 02:04 pmYesterday, I was inspired to continue the task of converting my audio cassettes to MP3 files. The longer I postpone it, the more the audio on the cassettes may degrade, and the more likely that the equipment I've been using to do the conversions, will break.
I had already converted all 26 of the cassettes that were official purchased albums. The remaining ones (45 to 50) have music that I recorded from the radio or which other people sent me. The former were simpler to do than the latter (which I'll call mix-tapes even though that term may not be accurate). With the albums, I simply recorded each side of the cassette onto the computer as a audio file, applied noise-reduction, then split the large file into a separate MP3 file for each song.
Right now I am recording the remaining cassettes to audio files, without yet doing any further processing on them. 15 cassettes are already done, leaving about 30 more. I could finish them in another week or two if I keep at it.
Then I'll eventually have to decide:
Should I keep each long 45 minute file, without splitting it by song? That is how I used to listen to them, and would keep the original experience. But some of the songs I really don't care to listen to anymore.
Splitting the files by song would require much extra effort. With the albums, there was silence between each song, and software was able to split them with minimal manual effort. My "mix-tapes" don't have the silences, and they have many more clips per side, all of which I'd have to manually split.
Once I split the songs, I'd be tempted to delete the ones I no longer care for, and to find better versions of the ones I still really enjoy. But the "lower" quality cassette versions of some songs still have a special nostalgic quality, which higher-quality versions simply can't replace. So I'll end up with multiple versions of those.
I think I'll do this:
Keep the full long versions of each cassette for archival/nostalgic purposes.
Also split them into individual files, and keep a full copy of those files just in case I ever want them.
For the remaining songs which I still enjoy listening to, put them in folders where my random-play MP3 player will be able to pick them up.
For the songs which I especially like and don't already have other versions of, see if I can find better versions online to purchase.
I had already converted all 26 of the cassettes that were official purchased albums. The remaining ones (45 to 50) have music that I recorded from the radio or which other people sent me. The former were simpler to do than the latter (which I'll call mix-tapes even though that term may not be accurate). With the albums, I simply recorded each side of the cassette onto the computer as a audio file, applied noise-reduction, then split the large file into a separate MP3 file for each song.
Right now I am recording the remaining cassettes to audio files, without yet doing any further processing on them. 15 cassettes are already done, leaving about 30 more. I could finish them in another week or two if I keep at it.
Then I'll eventually have to decide:
Should I keep each long 45 minute file, without splitting it by song? That is how I used to listen to them, and would keep the original experience. But some of the songs I really don't care to listen to anymore.
Splitting the files by song would require much extra effort. With the albums, there was silence between each song, and software was able to split them with minimal manual effort. My "mix-tapes" don't have the silences, and they have many more clips per side, all of which I'd have to manually split.
Once I split the songs, I'd be tempted to delete the ones I no longer care for, and to find better versions of the ones I still really enjoy. But the "lower" quality cassette versions of some songs still have a special nostalgic quality, which higher-quality versions simply can't replace. So I'll end up with multiple versions of those.
I think I'll do this:
Keep the full long versions of each cassette for archival/nostalgic purposes.
Also split them into individual files, and keep a full copy of those files just in case I ever want them.
For the remaining songs which I still enjoy listening to, put them in folders where my random-play MP3 player will be able to pick them up.
For the songs which I especially like and don't already have other versions of, see if I can find better versions online to purchase.