Topic: Cassette Transfers & A/D Converters

[todayforever]

Hi All,

So I'm about to start digitising the rest of my old cassette tapes (the ones I didn't 'archive' off to DAT 48/16 10 years ago). My original plan was to use my Tascam DA20 DAT deck as an A/D pass -through and go into my mac book pro via spdif. However, since I recently picked up a M Audio Frewire 410, I wanted advice as to whether I'd be better using the A/D converters in the soundcard and capturing at a higher bit/sample rate in the process? Would the benefits in higher sampling be offset by the poorer A/D converters in the 410?

FWIW, a lot of these are audience recordings and, as such, aren't of the highest fidelity to begin with.

Any advice welcome.

[notlance]

For cassette transfers 16 bit/44.1 kHz will work just fine.  Really.  The best cassette decks could barely get to 20 kHz (at a -20 dB recording level) with a S/N of about 70 dB with noise reduction.  A properly designed and implemented  16 bit/44.1 kHz digital system will go to 20 kHz with a S/N in excess of 90 dB.