Re: [ARSCLIST] Some advice on cassette decks?

["Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:07 AM 9/1/2006, Craig Breaden wrote:

> Regarding the content of my cassettes, it is all material related in one way
> or another to politics (and given we're in Georgia, much of it is civil
> rights related)

Good to know and worthy of preservation. I did some for a Florida 
University of this type of material.

> to user dubs made by my archive in the
> 70s that in some cases are in better shape than the original reels

Really? I just did a test with the same era tapes for Univ of 
Victoria and I was able to get better transfers from the reels than 
the cassettes.

> I plan to capture at 96/24 .wav

Why? There isn't going to be a drop over 20 kHz coming out of these 
machines. If you're lucky you'll have good response to 16 kHz.

I'd halve your media costs (other than the access copies) and go with 44.1/24.

> , with a
> three-tiered backup system that includes Mitsui Gold DVD (as a copy master),
> external hard drive, and LTO tape.  Listening copies will be rendered to
> gold cd directly following transfer.

That is good, but don't forget to normalize the level on the access 
copy. I would do the 44.1/24 archive copies at a standard level such 
that the loudest possible passage on the cassette won't clip, but 
since many cassettes are recorded at low levels, I'd normalize the 
listening/access copies.

Cheers,

Richard

Richard L. Hess                   email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada       (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.