I Miss the Simple Days of Analog!

[Cornwalled]

I just tried to archive a reel to reel tape to CD, and have found myself longing for the easier, simpler days of analog. This stupid CD recorder is the most frustrating, inept piece of equipment I've used in quite some time. Everything appeared to go fine until I played back the recorded CD, and there were skips, pops, distortion and jitters all over it. Cleaned the laser, and same thing. Tried to play back a cd through the recorder, and similar performance. Would've been great if the player could've told me it was a piece of junk BEFORE I wasted an hour with it! LOL Guess the laser is shot so it's giving spoty performance. It is probably around 15 years old.

It used to be, you recorded to your cassette deck, and watched your meters, and all was well! If you were fortunate enough to have a 3 head deck, you could monitor the tape as it was being recorded, and hear exactly what you were getting right away! How convenient! No rude surprises after the fact.

Now with digital recording, you never know what kind of desecration you'll get! I've had enough. Think I'll just back the tape up to my Nak ZX-7 and call it a day instead. As I type this, I have David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust LP spinning, and all is right with the world.

It's interesting to think how a 10 or so year old CD player is a boat anchor, while a 35 year old reel to reel machine, 25 year old tape deck, and 25 year old turntable continue to thrive in my system. Will analog machines ultimately outlive digital ones? Hmm, there's some food for thought..lol.

-Jon

[ZAKO]

There is nothing wrong with the laser...You need to clean the laser rail,,of old lube,,it gets gunky... than lightly relube,,

[Tarheel]

I just tried to archive a reel to reel tape to CD

I'm with you Cornwalled but I archive my CDs to RTR tape making compilations of my favorite artist. The tape copy gives a bit of warmth to the sometimes sterile CD. With a turntable and two RTRs I 'm firmly planted in the past and loving every second of it. Matter of fact I don't know what I'll do when I no longer have thoe 10" reels to watch. After all one of the Teacs is 37 years old, rebuilt and going strong, but still old.

[JL Sargent]

Its so true about the RTR and listening as you go. If things aren't right somehow you know it as soon as you monitor the tape. Which is usually seconds into the recording. I've recorded a few RTR tape compilations lately but not one CD. []

[boom3]

I have archived all my RTR using Peak software. I have never done a direct dump to CD, always processed the recording in Peak first and archived the files so I can burn more CDs later.

[oldtimer]

But you see, that's not simple or analog. Well I mean it's not simple to a troglodyte like me.

[Cornwalled]

I have to agree, I would not want to have to archive my R2R stuff to computer. I considered it, but realised my laptop is too slow to record contiguous audio w/o dropouts. So, it wouldn't be worth it for me. I really need a format I can count on, and so far, I haven't found anything digital that fits the bill. Still, I need to find something, as I have one very special pipe organ tape that's falling apart that I need to backup asap.

-Jon

[russ69]

It's all analog anyway. The music is analog, the pre-amp is analog, the power amp is analog and the speakers are analog. The only thing that isn't analog is the digital recording and that is trying to emulate the analog by taking very teenie tiny steps. The only thing you lack is proper editing to take care of the post processing. Digital storage is going to be with us a long time, the software will make the format obsolete but not anytime soon.

Thanx, Russ

[boom3]

My experience in archiving anything (audio, video, photos, printed matter) is to archive in the highest quality available to you (lossless, if possible) format first, and retain a copy in the "native" format (may be proprietary to the software or open-standard) as quickly as possible and don't wait for further deterioration to occur. If you're that concerned about your organ tape, I'd pay the money to a pro studio to capture it in the highest res they can provide and then down-sample a copy to a CD format so you can enjoy it. I have had good results using Peak to do the A/D and then Sound Soap to do any clean-up.

[Fish]

Is this reel you're trying to archive something not available on cd?

[Cornwalled]

It's Alexander Schreiner playing Christmas Carols in the Mormon Tabernacle organ. It's just the organ and the chimes. Someone loaned a record of it to my Dad, and he recorded a 6 hour Christmas compilation to VHS tape. This was the first album on the tape. It's something our family has listened to every Christmas since it was recorded back in the early 80's. However, the VHS tape is starting to degrade, and we have no idea how long the VCR will keep working, so I've been trying to find alternative copies of each of the albums.

So, I found this organ tape on reel to reel. I don't know if it was released on cd or not, but it definitely is available on reel and record. My reel is in ok shape, but not great- the audio seems to sort of fade in and out depending on what side of the reel is being played. I think one side of the reel may have gotten too close to a magnet, so it's a bit weak. The last time I loaded it, the leader fell off, making a little trickier to load.

Perhaps I can find a record of it instead.

As far as recording to computer, my laptop is VERY slow (old Celeron), and the hard drive is too slow to record audio. As a result, it has frequent dropouts in the recording when the hard drive accesses. So, I need a non-computer based method of recording it. My Dad has a cd-recorder that works well, but that would require lugging my R2R deck over to his place, and this thing is quite heavy. Borrowing the CD-R unit from my dad isn't an option because it's installed in a big wall unit, and trying to remove it would be a massive pain.

-Jon

[Fish]

I did see a lot of similar cds at cd universe