Minidisc v's CDr/CDRW recorders HELP

[Mike]

I have a large (600+) collection of cassettes and want to transfer them onto something digital .

Trouble is some of them require a lot of editing as well.

Ive been wondering whether to go for a minidisc recorder or a CD recorder

What are the editing facilities like on CD-RW recorders like ? I hear you can do all sorts of neat things on a minidisc but im not sure if the same facilities are available on CD-RW

Ive heard of reliability problems with Minidisc (A mate who works in a radio station said theyre about as reliable as PC floppy discs) Is this really a problem or just a case of cheap discs roughly handled in a studio enviornment ?

Do either minidisc or CD recorders generally have autolevel on anolouge sources ?

Im also considering a third option. Buying a cheap laptop and converting the lot to mp3 but I find Cool edit slow and clunky to use even on a fast machine so Im figuring it will take way too long on a cheap laptop. Is there a package which does what cool edit can do but a lot faster ?

[Macers]

Honestly to transfer sound from a cassette is always bad news. Sound is often broken and very poor. Have both CDR and Minidisc myself and it really goes down to personal preferance. Personally CDR....

[Mike]

Done carefully on decent equipment theres no reason for it to sound any worse than the original tape.

Ive already transfered stuff fairly successfully onto mp3 using cool edit

Trouble is it takes ages and kinda ties up the computer

[Arnold]

Mike there is a product called Steinberg Clean V3 cost STG15 on www.jungle.com
It will do some level control when copying from cassette to WAV or MP3.
You can then dump it to CD.

[Loopy Producer]

Im with arnold

I would dump them on to computer first tidy them edit and then burn to Cd. If you dont have access to a computer dump them to a md and then connect the md to your computer throught the sound card.

As well as using arnolds suggestions i would also use a hard limiter and also boost the bass as these will make them a much cleaner usable final product

Hopes this helps

[Happydude]

Although i own a minidisc which i use for recording off vinyl i would reccommend using a PC if possible.
Should probably record them as .wav files then encode to .mp3 or .ogg (less common but open source and better). It is well worth purchase a decent audio lead to link your tape deck to the PC soundcard.
However minidisc recorders will automate stuff like new track on breaks between songs.

A big issue will be storing all the stuff you get. If you use minidiscs then it will cost you (1 X 600 discs at normal rate) or (1X150 at lower quality compressed rate ) for 600 albums. The cost of this should be taken into account compared to a new harddrive of 150 Euro which will hold an awful lot more music.

[Happydude]

I was just thinking make sure you use a loseless format such as .wav or equivalent when recording off the tape if you plan to do any tidying/mastering/?? since this will give you much better results than recording to minidisc which use a compressed format or .mp3, or any other lossy (discards what it thinks are unimportant noises) format.
It is best to only transfer to lossy format as a final step.

[KJ]

Alo bear in mind the horrible compression and data loss you'll suffer with MD - it's 4:1 last I read. Like others above I prefer to tidy things up in the PC before copying to CD


KJ

;)

[patdj1]

Hey, Mike!

Courtenay.

I just got (for my b'day!) a Sony CD burner.

It comes with authoring (editing) software called "Nero," and although I'm having trouble setting the whole thing up, due to Cyber-dumbness, it's gonna be tons o' fun and would definitely be my preference for storage of archive stuff.

See, if you need to go out and record i/views that you can then edit on the way back to work, a mini-disc recorder is great. (Mind you, if you stuff up the edit, the piece is gone forever!)

However, a CD burner gives you more options, e.g: if you've got great editing software like Cool Edit Pro, you can return the speed of your sometimes inaccurate cassettes to the proper rate.
Both Nero and Cool Edit let you EQ, and remove tape hiss and static-clicks, too.

It's also worth remembering that a mini-disc is, after all, just a CD in a tiny little box! If you're careful with your full-size CD, it'll last just as long and you're able to play it in any computer....and the day Sony Corp. decides to make Mini-discs obsolete, chances are you'll still be able to find a hole for your CDs!

For me, burner at home, MD for work.

Cheers,

Pat.