Hi, Sam, and Tom, and the original poster,
I will admit to being a happy Magix/Samplitude user for ten years now. I
think there are several packages in this line that offer substantial value.
(1) Magix Audio Cleaning Lab - definitely an amateur product, but it has
some cut-down versions of the high-end stuff and is available for download
for $35 and a free trial is available. May be limited to CD-rate only.
http://www.magix.com/us/audio-cleaning-lab/
(2) For INGEST only (won't burn CDs, but will make WAV files, very limited
processing compared to (1) and (3) but is a peek into the beginning of the
"real deal" Samplitude -- version 9 SE
http://www.samplitude.com/eng/sam/se.html $50 Euros for download
(3) A very competent mastering (stereo) solution with the restoration
tools built in. Samplitude V10 Master,
http://www.samplitude.com/eng/sam/master.html for 249 Euros, but may still
be available for $299 US (see OrangeHill link, below).
There is a generic version (w/o restoration tools) for 30-day free trial
available here:
http://www.samplitude.com/eng/seq/shop.html
The Samplitude US pricing is available here from OrangeHill Audio:
http://www.orangehillaudio.com/pricelist.html
I am currently using Samplitude version 10.1 PRO and the restoration suite
which is included in MASTER but an option in PRO plus the Algorithmix Noise
Free Pro plug-in. At MAP on the OrangeHill site, that's $2599 worth of
software if you bought it today.
Version differences are here:
http://www.samplitude.com/eng/seq/vers_unt.html
However, I think that a reasonable suite could be made from:
Samplitude 9 SE for ingest (four stereo programs at a time)
Samplitude 10 master for cleanup (one at a time)
The ideal arrangement, as I see it, would be an ingest PC running SE and
four playback decks, recording to its hard drive. An auto-run ViceVersa Pro
instance pushing those ingests to a server system (or at least a pair of NAS
boxes) and then the cleanup workstation(s) work directly off the server/NAS
over Gigabit Ethernet. I'm doing something somewhat similar in my workflow
and it works. That's less than $400 worth of software and it's very
competent. With competent used Dell Optiplexes available in this neck of the
woods for ~$500 tricked out as you'd need for audio (3 GHz processor, 1 GB
of RAM, 250 GB D: drive for data) you can set up a useable "factory" for
$1400 plus your monitor speakers (another $1400 or so - Mackie HR824s are a
good choice and if you can get the original version used, that would be
great) and then a good audio interface (I like the RME Multiface II a lot -
it has switchable gain so it can work with IHF levels directly). That's
another $1000 or so. This means a very competent setup for multi-ingest and
single-processing (in parallel) could be set up for approximately $4000
which, while not peanuts, is far less than the cost of another person and
would allow substantial throughput -- perhaps as much as four people doing
single-element transfers.
The multiple ingest model only works if you scan all of the files for
defects during a post session. This model permits that, but you can do that
quickly and then render the MP3 access file and move on.
I use an earlier version of Samplitude SE to do 8-channel ingest in
parallel with the 16-channel ingest I can do with my setup under Samplitude
PRO. These run on two workstations as I have an 8-channel interface on my
aux workstation and a 16-channel interface on my main one...but I don't have
any 24-track playback capabilities (i.e. from one tape).
I will be the first to admit that the learning curve of Samplitude is
steep, but no steeper than Audacity--at least for me. There are videos on
their website that might help. However, if you could get an hour on the
phone with someone after you've run through the tutorials it would help.
So, here's the software I'm currently using on a regular day in/day out
basis:
Samplitude 10.1 Pro
Samplitude Restoration Plug-ins (most notably the de-clicker/de-crackler
and not just on grooved-media-derived files (which I don't officially
do))
Algorithmix Noise-Free Pro
RME Total Mix
RME DigiCheck analyzer and stereo scope display
FastSum MD5 generator
Here's the software I use perhaps once every month or two:
WaveLab
GoldWave
Here's the software loaded on my machine that I don't think I've used for
six months or more:
Diamond Cut (DC6--I didn't bother to upgrade to 7)
Audacity
Sorry this got long, but I wanted to provide specific models.
Please don't cheap out, even on oral histories -- if your oral histories
are anything like the ones I'm doing, they need all the help they can get.
Cheers,
Richard
At 09:32 AM 2008-08-15, Sam Brylawski wrote:
Sorry for the mistyping on Soundforge, Tom . I didn't mean to imply
that I thought that Audacity was in a league with Soundforge and any
other professional applications.
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.