Using a Philips EL3549A to convert tapes to digital.

[mikeharry7]

Hi,

I have a lot of tapes I wish to transfer to my computer. I would need them in WAV form so I can get them mastered professionally. Is there a way I can link my philips player to a macbook and transfer these recordings? If so, what cables do I need to get? I have read in other threads that the bottom right connection (diode output) is the correct one to line out to computer but I need the correct cable to link them up.

Please help!

Mike

[paulsherwin]

If you are sufficiently concerned about quality to have professional masters produced then you should have the tapes digitized professionally too. You Philips recorder is only a (relatively) cheap'n'cheerful domestic machine and won't make the best of what's on the tapes, even if it's in perfect working order.

If you want to proceed anyway then the diode output provides a line level output which you can connect to one of the channels of you soundcard input. You will probably need to wire a DIN-jack cable yourself, though it's possible to connect bare wires to the DIN socket using bent paperclips.

Once you have digitized the mono signal you can duplicate it onto a second channel in software and export a stereo WAV file for burning to a CD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

If you are sufficiently concerned about quality to have professional masters produced then you should have the tapes digitized professionally too.

Quite so. At the risk of labouring the point, the quality of the initial transfer is vital. Any information lost by excess wow, noise, azimuth errors, or a dozen other things cannot be rectified in subsequent processing, and it is a fact that you can get more information off an analogue carrier with the best playback equipment than contemporary gear can give you.

Or, as somebody once said - garbage in, garbage out.

[julie_m]

You will need something like this, as modern laptops have no analogue audio line-in socket anymore.

[paulsherwin]

Is that true of Macbooks? It's ages since I used one and I can't remember.

[mikeharry7]

Thanks for all the help. I have a lot of tapes so I would like to transfer them myself if possible so they would be backed up. When I go through all the tapes I'll probably choose the ones to get digitized professionally. There's a studio nearby that bake tapes and transfer them, they charge by the hour so I'd prefer to get some done myself.

Paul, would I need a cable like this to connect the reel to reel player to the laptop/ION audio converter: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...pL._SY355_.jpg or http://m.ebay.com/itm/161858878583

[paulsherwin]

Well, those are the right plugs, but I've no idea how they are wired.

If you can find an old keyboard from a 1980s PC then that should have the right plug on too. You can use a scrap pair of cheap headphones to provide the jack plug and cable.

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by mikeharry7

There's a studio nearby that bake tapes and transfer them

That's as may be, but tapes contemporaneous with the machine may not need baking at all - in fact, it may be detrimental.

Any tape with an acetate base should never be baked. To identify, hold the spool up to the light. If the tape pack is translucent, it's an acetate base. Most brown coloured shiny backed stock won't need baking, whatever the backing material may be.

The need for baking arises with tapes from about 1970 on, particularly Ampex, although other matt-backed stock can be prone to the same problem, variously called "sticky shed" or "binder breakdown". This is the only group for which routine baking is advisable, especially as the outer turns may play OK, leading you to play the tape and suddenly find that great gobs of oxide have stuck to the back of the previous turn, I've had such tapes brought to me, and there's little anybody can do once they have reached this stage.

[julie_m]

There would be little point in having tapes professionally transferred, if they were only recorded on a simple home machine in the first place. In fact, barring excessive wear, the exact same tape head that recorded them in the first place probably is the perfect one to play them back with. Just make sure you clean the heads and the entire tape path -- including the capstan, pinch roller and all guides and rollers. BBC Radio Derby used to clean all their tape machines using methylated spirits and ordinary cotton wool buds; so if they were good enough for the BBC .....

The ION Vinyl Forever audio input device requires two phono plugs for its input, not a 3.5 mm. jack plug (the 3.5 mm. socket is for a pair of headphones, so you can listen to the signal being presented to the computer). It is supplied with a pair of leads with phono plugs on each end. You could cut the original plugs off one end, and solder on your own plug to fit the tape recorder. At first try the white inner core to pin 3, the red to pin 5 (it doesn't really matter which way around, as the same mono signal should be present on both pins; but the convention with stereo recorders is for pins 1 and 3 to be the left channel and pins 4 and 5 the right, and you may as well follow this) and both sets of outer shielding wires to pin 2. You may need to insert a piece of paper or a cut-down length of insulation tape, doubled up adhesive-to-adhesive, to keep hings from touching A mono recorder may only present a signal on pin 3; in which case, you will have to connect both the red and white inner cores to pin 3 and both sets of outer shielding wires to pin 2. Remember to push the wires through the outer cover of the DIN plug before you begin soldering!

By the way, be sure to set the slide switch on the ION Vinyl Forever device to "line" -- the "phono" setting is for direct connection to a magnetic cartridge; which produces a weak signal which also has not enough bass and too much treble, and the necessary corrections applied by the ION device will cause severe distortion to the signal from any other device. The software CD is for Windows, but the Audacity software is Open Source and therefore available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. You can download it from http://audacityteam.org/download/ . Note also that the volume control on the ION Vinyl Forever device affects the signal going into the computer. You should aim to set it so the software level control is about 75%. Watch the level meter; if you get a peak that goes off the scale, it will create very nasty audible distortion, and you will need to start again from the beginning of the song or spoken piece. But don't set the level too low either, because the noise level is effectively fixed, so the weaker the signal, the worse the signal:noise ratio. Actually, you probably know all this anyway, if you have used a tape recorder before ..... the rules are pretty similar for making a digital recording on a computer .....

[paulsherwin]

I'm not sure I agree that there's little point in having the tapes digitized professionally. It all depends on what the recordings are, how important they are to the OP, what the purpose of the digitization is and how much money is available. If they are off mic recordings of Grandad at Christmas dinner in 1966 then professional work is probably OTT. If they are rare performances by a subsequently famous musician and are to be released commercially, then as Ted says you want to squeeze every bit of fidelity out of the tape.

The OP's machine is an early solid state design with Ge transistors, and is likely to be relatively noisy. It's also very likely to have head wear if it's been in use for 50 years.

[mikeharry7]

I managed to get a 5 pin DIN to jack cable. Julie is correct when she told me that the audio input cannot be used as a line in for this type of thing....I don't understand why they would get rid of this. Anyway, I have a HP laptop and the microphone-in jack can record what is playing from the reel to reel player which I'm delighted with.

I'm just wondering, would it be better if I got an audio interface and fed the audio through a usb port as opposed to the mic-in port? Would this supply better quality? I have an LR Baggs...could this be used as a preamp and connect using an XLR to usb cable?

With regards to software, would Audacity be a good enough programme to do this and what file type should I export the material as (wav./mp3 etc)

Sorry for all the questions.

[Nickthedentist]

Audacity is excellent for this kind of thing.

[paulsherwin]

If you are simply recording an analogue signal as a WAV file then the software isn't doing much. The digitization is handled by the soundcard hardware. You can use any software that you're comfortable with.

However, if you want to modify the digitized audio in any way you will need software like Audacity, which is powerful and free, though there are lots of other editors which could do the job.

Save the data as uncompressed WAV files. You can easily produce MP3 or AAC files later for specific purposes,