Grateful Dead

I am going to disagree with Big D who says not to use computers. What a lot of folks do not know is that a PC or MAC can be optimized for audio recording. (Think dedicated workstation) The use of good components (cough,nakamichi, cough) is critical, but it is even more important to take the A>D (analog to digital conversion for the non-techy lurkers) OUT OF THE COMPUTER. There are many, many high quality and inexpensive external sound card or A>D options that fill this role. Some are much more than adequate than a pricey professional DAT deck and for a nominal cost. I transfer tapes as a volunteer for a music preservation 501c3 project that myself an a couple buddies began. (www.thespps.org) So to revisit what Big D claims, using cassette>DAT for A>D>Standalone CD burner is archaic at best. Why bother going redbook at all? Why not take it straight to 24 bit? If it is my master then I am not going to put my masters on CD at all. They either get streamed at 24 bit on a home theater set up or ripped to a DVD-A for the true audiophile experience. If I happen to trade it to someone else they get a data copy of my master and can rip it to 96kbps .mp3 for all I care. Just don't torture my ears with that crap. ;p Send a PM if someone wants help researching setting up your own transfer solutions, or even help transferring a master or two if you don't want to eat the cost of buying new gear just for a few transfers. Peace y'all...dsj kskreiderATlivetapingDOTcom

...shall we go, you and I while we can... Should that link not work, use this at bt.tree: gd72-8-27.sbd.braverman.16582.sbeok.flacf

...shall we go, you and I while we can... If you torrent shows, get this now. http://bt.tree.org/details.php?id=506552 This is the best copy available and I'll keep sharing it all weekend.

The next thing would be to convert the files onto the iPod for personal listening. I have a couple shows on it now but their in WAV format so 4-5 shows fill the thing up. I probably will convert them for the iPod but only after I get them onto disk via the above steps. OK on Toast. I have 5.0 from the OS 9 days and its a great program too. Im just being spoiled and using the freeware for now. Eric

I have been using a Sony WMD6C deck plugged into a Philips stand alone burner to do this I get one or two shows a week finished to my liking With 20+ years of aud masters it is a long ongoing process

...shall we go, you and I while we can... The only problem with them is that they take the music and put it in a lossy format. Some people can't hear the difference, some can. The reason these files aren't traded is they are degraded copies of the lossless files you started with. Sometime you might want to look at a spectral analysis of an mp3 file to see exactly how much you lose. The result is suprising! The other issue with iPods are those headphones, which, unless you buy a far superior and costly pair, also degrade your sound. The Ipod devices that will handle 20-40 GB's of information can hold lossless files and, since each show approximates 1 GB of information, you can get a lot of information on them for roughly $400.

Sounds like you have a nice workflow going. One thing if you are just burning audio cd's you may look at getting toast 7.0 for burning. Since a few versions ago you can put the flac files into toast and select to burn an audio CD. No need to run it through xACT. This won't work for .shn as it's a compression scheme and not a Audio codec which flac is. Takes a big step out of the equation. Lately it seem slike my iPod is my main audio player and I don't burn audio Cd's much. SO I've found a nice converter that works great. It's called Sound Converter and you can find it on version tracker. Cost is $10 and worth EVERY cent. So I've been taking flac or shn files directly to 256 VBR MP3 files. Depending on processor and ram it does not take to long. But as long as it sounds good on the other side I'm ok with the time it takes. It will also convert just about any format to any format. Very cool. Of course the MP3's are for personal use and never traded. I do give them away sometimes though.

I'm thinking of investing in a HDCD player - any thoughts? "From day to day, just lettin' it ride, You get so far away from how it feels inside, You can't let go, 'cause you're afraid to fall, But the day may come when you can't feel at all."

Hey Headway... Im using a iMac g3 (dv) with a LaCie burner. So far, so good. I also have 3 PCs and the Mac seems to be the simplest to get stuff burnt onto disk. Im listening to 4/15/89 that I got off off etree last night. This was all new to me a few weeks ago and Ive got onto the digital bus after years of analog trading. Heres a simple start up which Ive found (with some help). 1) http//db.etree.org 2) DL (flac or shn) to Azureus 3) decode to AIFF or Wav with xACT 4) use a burn prg (I have used iTunes 7.x and "Burn" 1.7 As mentioned I have Audicity for my analog tapes but have yet to experiment much with it as I am re-treading all my tunes from the above method. I just hope it wont take another 7+ years lol.. Eric

before i got a computer.i bought a phillips stand alone cd burner with analog in puts.this wont make digital cd,s but will let you make some thing to play,down side is you have to trak thim or you cant skip throug the cd and not to many people will condone this for trading.its ok for personal use but try to get some didgital lossless shows for tradin b&p me some cds and I will make you some