Transfer cassette to digital; use preamp?

@jaddie you got it buddy...no more quotes.

 

In some cases it's the nostalgia tied to the home-made cassette recording, regardless of the quality. As a famous beet farmer once said: “Nostalgia is truly one of the great human weaknesses. Second only to the neck.”
A similar thing happened with old VHS recordings and wanting to preserve them, flaws and all.
Sometimes you can replicate the old cassette by buying a new source (e.g. an entire digital album), but other times you can't. For example I have cassette recordings of concerts, or The King Biscuit Flower Hour, or that sort of thing, which I recorded from FM radio stations. There's probably no way to replicate or replace some of these besides my cassette sources. Which reminds me (thanks for this thread, Popmarter), I need to dust off my cassette collection and figure out which ones I need to digitize, and hope they are still playable without dropouts. I used a dbx224 noise reduction with most of my cassettes, which encodes onto the tape, and fortunately I still have the dbx224 and it still works.

 

For the OP, you have good equipment and should get good results especially if transferring a good sounding cassette. I done many for over two decades and have made many CD's that sound great. I have always wanted to try one of the Tascam unit you have, tho I have stuck with Pioneer pdr's. I had tried a couple other units and didn't get good results, but then again I have never tried a Tascam or that 3000 model.
I plan on picking one up, I have heard good transfers made on Tascam cd recorders.

Cheers and enjoy

 

Sorry.

I wish it were only hundreds.

 

Having just transferred a slew of cassettes to digital including pre-recorded and self-recorded, I've been consistently surprised how free of dropouts most of them are. I've been careful to store them in climate controlled locations, which I'm sure has helped. I'm also transferring using a better deck than most of them were recorded on... I have a few vinyl dubs that I lost the vinyl through the years and have really enjoyed hearing them again.

 

Noted regarding the off-topic comments. Regarding your question, assuming it's a standard cassette deck, it should provide line-level output which should be sufficient for the digital recorder as an input signal.

 

I assume you watched the Techmoan video? He answers the question via an A/B test. TL;DW - a recording made on a good quality cassette deck with a good quality chrome tape compares very favorably to the source material, to the point that with casual listening you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I wouldn't call that "bottom of audio quality" as you put it.

 

Make of deck does not matter.
Most all have standard RCA
No.
From personal experience, standard cassette decks have sufficient output to feed the Tascam with little or no adjustment.
Noted.

 

short path

 

I use a Tascam DVRA1000HD, which I think is the predecessor to your DA3000 (however I haven't digitized cassettes yet). Does your DA3000 have the same digital effects processing that the 1000HD has (3 band parametric equalizer and variable compander)? The effects can be applied to recordings. While I haven't tried it, these effects might be useful in some cases for digitizing cassette sources.
I'm not sure about this but the attainable SNR from cassettes might be such that your choice of signal path #1 or #2 might not be discernable. In other words the SNR of either path is probably at least 10dB better than the native SNR of the cassette, so the cassette's SNR limitation dominates either path. If you do happen to try both #1 and #2 to compare them, please report back on your findings. I'll have a similar consideration in the future.

 

Setting the gain on certain/some Tascam devices can be problematic as they have fixed gain settings as this device does.

M~

 

It's interesting how a simple question of how to most effectively digitize a cassette transformed-into a debate over the quality of the cassette format.

 

I hear you, it's so sad.

M~

 

No, it does not (have fixed gain)

 

It appears to only have three gain settings. http://blkmacster.com/images/Levels.jpg Though they may not be "fixed" in the truest sense of the word. That they are limited, no sane person can deny.

M~

 

Do you have a Tascam DA3000 in front of you? I do.

It's not a question of what it APPEARS to do from reading the manual, I can see and feel what it actually DOES.

When I select Input Vol. the jog wheel allows selection, in increments, from -60 to +12

-60 to -48 is in 6dB increments
-48 to -36 is in 4dB increments
-36 to -24 is in 2db increments
-24 to -18 is in 1dB increments
-18 to +12 is in 0.5dB increments.

To all intents and purposes, it is, in the ranges which matter, continuously variable from -60 to +12. MUTE is one step below -60.

.... You have misread the statement in the manual. ....

It states "options are MUTE, -60 TO +12 where the TO is represented by that hyphen between -60 and +12

The manual says in print "MUTE, -60 - +12" which is, if I spell it out, is "MUTE, and -60 to +12"

If it were three separate options, it would read

"MUTE, -60, +12" - with a comma, not a hyphen.

 

Ok, you are right.


M~

 

More importantly, this Tascam has real consumer-level RCA inputs and real professional level XLR inputs and outputs. The levels are calibrated by standard, unlike many interfaces where you plug your converter cable into the XLR/MIC/DI/1/4" input and dial an arbitrary analog knob.

The setting you'd want for Input Vol. is 0.0dB. There, the cassette VU/peak meter's 0dB (which should be -10dBV output) records at -16dB digital, so you'd have plenty of digital headroom (to saturate a cassette tape to +16dB on the level meter is near impossible and would sound terrible). Playback will be the same voltage level as the cassette deck put out.

(PS other "reference level" or "maximum input" settings only apply to the XLR input).

 

Excuse me, but we aren't permitted to discuss this here.

 

Not allowed to compare equipment? Which rule is that? There are whole threads comparing CD and Vinyl. And reel to reel. And streaming. And lossless. Etcetera ad infinitum.

 

Here you go:

 

Cocteau Twins-Heaven or Las Vegas, 1990 was mixed to a cassette
So by default it's the source of the compact disc and LP.


@Popmarter I do all mine at 44, no sense in going any higher with the sample rate.

 

Not allowed in this thread, in this case. Any such discussions would throw the entire thread off topic or into mayhem. So, if you want to compare analog to digital, or even another analog to analog format, then start your own thread.

That said, I agree with most of the others: Direct analog to analog, unless the separate preamp has an A/D converter that's somehow superior to that built inside the Tascam recorder.

 

My workflow exactly. CR-7A to the DA-3000. This method has worked well for the last 4-5 years, and I'm still not through all of my cassettes. (Focusing on DAT transfers right now, as I don't know how long my Sony DAT will last, and getting it repaired is becoming increasingly difficult.)

DanLore