Utah State Univ (Logan) or Univ of Illinois (Springfield)?

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Re: Utah State Univ (Logan) or Univ of Illinois (Springfield)?

Postby sfishman on April 27th, 2010, 7:54 pm

Yes, make sure to check out the first like Oberon gave, it'll make it a lot less guesswork for you, meaning you will end up with a higher quality capture, in a much shorter amount of time.

Thanks for your work towards the community!
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Re: Utah State Univ (Logan) or Univ of Illinois (Springfield)?

Postby Oberon on April 27th, 2010, 10:09 pm

Actually Audacity (at least the latest beta) isn't too bad. It has a timed recording feature, so I just set it for plenty of time and start the tape player. I come back later (possibly hours later) to edit the extra time out of the recording; no need to stick around. If your tape player can be set to reverse once, you could do both sides at once and split the file later. I usually split into separate lesson files.

Be sure to use the LINE OUT jack of the player rather than the headphone out. The headphone output goes through a final amplifier that typically add some distortion. LINE OUT also uses a standard normalized amplitude. Also try to go into a LINE IN jack on the computer rather than a microphone jack. If the mic jack absolutely must be be used, you'll need to disable any preamp. Some computers allow that to be turned off in a settings panel.

Try a few sample runs first.

Sorry if this is all obvious; but I've had to re-do several dozen hours of work once when I messed up...
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Re: Utah State Univ (Logan) or Univ of Illinois (Springfield)?

Postby kengle3 on April 30th, 2010, 10:52 pm

I just need to locate a player and I'll be able to start. As long as I can locate it before I leave for the summer I should be able to make a couple.
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Re: Utah State Univ (Logan) or Univ of Illinois (Springfield)?

Postby kengle3 on May 5th, 2010, 1:56 am

I located a player and I'm going to try to record Hebrew tomorrow afternoon. Is anyone able to listen to a sample to ensure I'm not doing anything stupid encoding it? I'm not the most astute when it comes to audio and other then things like over peaking I probably won't notice any issue.
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Re: Utah State Univ (Logan) or Univ of Illinois (Springfield)?

Postby Oberon on May 5th, 2010, 9:37 pm

The big problem with the existing audio files is the muffled sound. Be sure to have have the Dolby turned off on the tape player in order to make sure all the high frequencies are preserved. I'd just save the files as mono, down-sampled to 22.05KHz WAV or FLAC files. Then play around with the "Noise Removal" effect in Audacity Beta program (http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=Noise_Removal) to get a good sounding result. Keep copies of the unfiltered versions of the files in case you decide to make changes later. Try using the following settings:

Noise reduction (db): 9
Frequency Smoothing (Hz): 150
Attack/Decay time (secs): 0.10

Be sure to use the output RCA connectors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_connector) on the tape player as these are the "LINE OUT" connectors that provide a standard signal needed for the "LINE IN" connector on the digitizer (computer). Don't use the player's headphone jack as the voltage on this line is not standardized and is typically more distorted.

Whatever you get is bound to sound better than what is currently here. Having a little more hiss sound is fine if it results in a less muffled overall result.
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Re: Utah State Univ (Logan) or Univ of Illinois (Springfield)?

Postby kengle3 on May 15th, 2010, 5:17 am

When I tried to find the course myself, I couldn't locate it so I requested the librarians at the main stacks locate it for me. The main stacks couldn't locate the course on its first pass, so they say they are going to do a more intensive search soon. So at this point I'm waiting on the librarians to locate it. Hopefully they'll find it before I leave campus for the summer, or it'll be another few months before I can record them.
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Re: Utah State Univ (Logan) or Univ of Illinois (Springfield)?

Postby Oberon on May 15th, 2010, 8:17 am

If the Hebrew course is lost, consider looking at some of the smaller courses that can be done quickly such as the missing Greek, Italian, and Spanish material.
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