Recording and editing audio?

[T i m]

Hi all,

Sister was given Dads (passed away 6 years ago) old mini cassette Dictaphone so she could see if the dogs made much noise when she was out (she also has an iPad so could probably do it easier on that?) and found it had some of Dads work on it. She thought that it might be worth saving such so that younger members of the family might know what their grandad sounded like as we aren't aware of any film / video of him etc.

So, when round Mums yesterday I plugged the Headphones output of the Dictaphone into the Mic input of the MacBook I keep round there and after a quick Google, seemed to find that Quicktime on OSX had the simple means to do what I wanted (and it seemed to). It has a VU meter and simultaneous audio out so I could monitor my input signal levels etc (to stop over modulating / clipping etc).

My initial intention was to just record however much of both sides of both cassettes contain anything of interest into one file and then edit that on a PC to select the best of it. However, it seems he's used different settings on the Long / Short play so I'll need to monitor and follow that as I record and probably end up with several files.

So, the question is, what then would be the *easiest* and ideally free tool (on Win / Lin or OSX) to take several audio files and edit them into one that could be played on pretty well anything please?

It doesn't have the be the most subtle re the actual edits, just that it's easy to use without a load of setup and reading etc?

Cheers, T i m

[Davey]

Using Ubuntu, I find Audacity a good tool.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I will second that.

Openshot - the video editor - can also edit just sound files. Unfortunately the output is a video file - mp4 etc.

Both are available for all common platforms

I have used Openshot to stitch stuff together and audacity to turn it into a sound only file.

[Martin Brown]

+1 although I used it on Windows. It is on any platform within reason:

You can cut bits out and do simple swaps and fades easily enough without spending too much time learning how to use it. Save as MP4 should be OK. -- Regards, Martin Brown

[NY]

Also, you may find that you can get good enough reproduction of the parts played at the wrong speed without needing to re-record them at the other speed, especially if they are fairly rare compared with the other speed. It is them possible to copy the "wrong" parts in Audacity and paste them into a new recording which you then convert up/down by a factor of 2 (assuming that the Dictaphone has simple ratios of speed such as half, quarter. If the recordings were hifi in the first place, then you'd lose some high frequencies doing it this way, but since the Dictaphone will have a pretty limited frequency response, you may not notice any difference. OK. it's "cheating" but it's easy.

As always with anything like this, make a COPY of the original WAV file that you record in Audacity and edit the COPY, so you don't accidentally mess up the original which would require you to copy it from tape again.

[Martin Brown]

That is actually important advice. ALWAYS work on a spare copy.

It is especially important if working from elderly oxide tapes that get worse by losing material with every time they are replayed.

Although it has never happened to me some people have complained that Audacity will let you trash the original audio file if you do something silly and then save it.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

What I use on Windows too. I find it easy to use without having to learn it up - but then had used all sorts of digital audio workstations before, including AudioFile. And anything is easy after that. ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Must admit to never having found something the Undo button doesn't sort.

But yes - always worth having a backup copy.

[The Natural Philosopher]

ITYM mp3....

[whisky-dave]

ot sure what happens if you delete say text from a word file, then save the empty file then do undo. Or if you clear the area rather than delete.

Yes at least one. :-D

[Brian Gaff]

Free trial of Goldwave, audacity or almost anything that comes as editing software with a plug in sound device really. The point is what are you going to store it on, would you need speed changing hiss removal or any other editing features? I'm told on I phones etc there is something called ferrite or similar but I've not used it.

If you want to burn a cd as standard end up with wav files recorded at

44.1khz stereo and use something like CD Burner XP which works well on 10 and 7. If you are happy to play it on a dvd player or computer, any nice sounding mp3 format is fine, but make sure you finalise any cd you put it onto.

Brian

[newshound]

I was going to suggest that, there are versions for Windows and (I think) MacBooks.

[Roger Hayter]

I think audio is just a minor bit of the ubiquitous video, nowadays.

[Vir Campestris]

Another vote for Audacity.

I've got Adobe Audition on my Windows box, which I prefer slightly, but that isn't free.

Andy

[NY]

For ease of use, I prefer CoolEdit, but that stopped development a loooong time ago so it doesn't get any new features. Audacity is a good second.

[T i m]

As the Macbook defaults to Mint 18(.3) MATE I tried that first. with a couple of programs, inc Audiacity and although I believe I did get it to record something, I couldn't get it to provide any output for me to monitor what I was recording.

Then I rebooted it into Windows (10) and tried and installed a couple of utilities and again one worked (can't remember what) but had the same issue of either no VU meter or unable to monitor what I was recording (levels or content).

Then I plugged in the original OSX drive in it's USB caddy and booted from that and again tried something with no (desired) effect before more Googling and trying the Quicktime Audio Record I mentioned (and that worked best).

Whilst trying to monitor the input in Audacity in Linux (the only one I tried it on) I started to see more tracks and seeing hundreds of buttons and menu options I gave up before my stress levels went too high.

Maybe it's just that I wasn't possible to get what I wanted using Linux on the Apple hardware (audio mixer / device limitations) as it worked straight away using Quicktime on OSX?

By the time I got *something* working it was time to leave so I'll have to try again the next time we go round there.

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

I have used some fairly complex software in the past and that's fine as long as it's both logical and intuitive.

e.g. I know to check that I've selected the external Microphone port (for the lack of a 'Line In') and the output to the internal speakers, because I want to monitor live what I'm recording (as I'm not using a Mic so there would be no feedback etc).

I know to watch the VU meters and roughly where to set the levels for the best s/n and to press record. I'd know I have to give it a filename before or after hitting record and that it can sometimes try to over write the same one each time if not careful.

I also know that whilst I was using a 'Stereo' interconnecting cable the Dictaphone was only Mono so to set the recording software into Mono to ensure I get both channels recorded.

So, I know the sort of things I might need to do ... and tried to do them (and try / test other things, like is it making sounds in general, does the mixer have anything turned off or turned down) and so then if it doesn't do what I want after trying most of the obvious combinations, I move onto something else (Hardware, OS or program) till I find something that does work as I require and *easily*.

So, I'm sorta happy (in the light of not getting Audacity working fully on Linux) that I can use Quicktime to record (and simultaneously see and hear the output) but from my brief experience with Audacity so far, might still look for something 'easier' to do the post recording editing.

Cheers, T i m

p.s. I'm similarly frustrated ripping my first BD to put it on a DVD. I ripped / decoded it ok so I now have a file that plays in VLC etc. However, I can only seem to get / select the audio track for the visually impaired. I'm guessing there must be all sort of 'additional' stuff on these disks (subtitle languages and audio tracks etc) but I don't know enough about all that to set any of the tools up appropriately (and what I've tried didn't seem to work) and the Googled solutions don't seem to clarify it at all. ;-(

[T i m]

Good ideas but in hindsight I don't think there is enough content to try that. e.g. It would be easier to just switch the speeds and then record as I can them monitor for content as I do so etc.

Understood (and my normal practice for such things).

Cheers, T i m

[The Natural Philosopher]

MP4 will probably use AAC encoding. MP3 players may not be able to decode that.

[whisky-dave]

I prefer it although I found wavepad easier to use even on a Mac. If only Audacity could export mp3s without having to separately install the lame MP3 extention it'd help.

I used to prefer soundedit16