[gentoo-user] Tape to CD conversion advice needed

[gentoo-user] Tape to CD conversion advice needed

[Dave S]

Hi all,

I need some advice, I need to convert some talks at my local group from
tape to CD. I have a mike input on my audio card so connecting the audio
should not be a problem.

What file formats do standard CD players play ? I would guess mp3 but
there do not appear to be any mp3 encoders for linux, ogg would be great
but I doubt that it would play.

Can anyone suggest an application to get the files from the tape &
change them into said format ? (Simple is good, I dont need a recording
studio :))

Cheers
Dave
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Re: [gentoo-user] Tape to CD conversion advice needed

[Colin]

On Jul 23, 2005, at 3:34 AM, Dave S wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I need some advice, I need to convert some talks at my local group  
> from
> tape to CD. I have a mike input on my audio card so connecting the  
> audio
> should not be a problem.

I believe that the mic input is handled differently than the line  
input (automatic gain control, decibel boosts, etc.).  Use your  
card's line input jack instead.  It should be right next to the mic  
jack.  In most color schemes, it's usually the blue one (red=mic,  
green=out);  read the labels if you're not sure.
>
> What file formats do standard CD players play ? I would guess mp3 but
> there do not appear to be any mp3 encoders for linux, ogg would be  
> great
> but I doubt that it would play.

Standard CD players play waveform audio (WAV), but I believe it needs  
to be aligned to the CD block boundaries.  However, you'll need to  
burn it as an audio CD, not a data CD, otherwise it will be  
unreadable to the CD player.  Most CD players nowadays can play back  
MP3 data CD's but there's no standard, not even a de facto one, for  
this.

Dare I say it?  Most people do have computers, so if your local group  
doesn't make "Learn [subject] While Driving" tapes, it may be cheaper  
and easier to simply forgo the physical medium and stick them on a  
web server for downloading/streaming/podcasting.  MP3's of people  
talking don't require the higher bitrates that music does, so you can  
drop the bitrate and change it to mono (one-channel audio) to save  
some server space/bandwidth.

>
> Can anyone suggest an application to get the files from the tape &
> change them into said format ? (Simple is good, I dont need a  
> recording
> studio :))

Anything that can listen to your card's line-in will do.  I haven't  
done it on Linux, but on Windows/Mac OS X, pretty much any program  
will do it.  As for burning, most programs that can burn an audio CD  
take MP3/WAV/OGG/WMA/AAC files (your choices may vary depending on  
the app) as input and do the conversion themselves behind the scenes  
before burning.
--
Colin
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Re: [gentoo-user] Tape to CD conversion advice needed

[Richard Fish]

Dave S wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I need some advice, I need to convert some talks at my local group from
>tape to CD. I have a mike input on my audio card so connecting the audio
>should not be a problem.
>
>What file formats do standard CD players play ? 
>

Standard CD audio is 44100 samples/s, 16-bit samples, LSB byte order.   
So what you really want to do is capture the tapes to .wav files with 
those parameters, then just pass the wav files to cdrecord for writing 
to the CD.

>I would guess mp3 but
>there do not appear to be any mp3 encoders for linux, ogg would be great
>but I doubt that it would play.
>  
>

A few CD players will now play mp3 files written in a standard ISO 
filesystem.  But it is a recent feature, and not terribly standard.  
lame is probably the most popular mp3 encoder for Linux.

>Can anyone suggest an application to get the files from the tape &
>change them into said format ? 
>

arecord -f cd tape.wav

arecord is part of media-sound/alsa-utils.

-Richard

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Re: [gentoo-user] Tape to CD conversion advice needed

[Dave S]

Thanks for the info,

Thats realy usefull, I will go buy a lead & explore lame - The server
idea is interesting and one I might explore ....

Dave
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