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ForumMaster
USA
530 Posts |
 Posted - 05/29/2003 : 04:30:32 AM
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From: Mindfull (Original Message) Sent: 9/2/2002 12:04 PM
I would like to make quality cassettes or CD's for my clientele. Currently, I am using a dual cassette boom box with a built-in mic that's about a 100 years old. Amazingly, the sound quality is pretty good. However, it's time to look into 21st century technology that is simple to use and under $500. What I want is to incorporate a CD or audio tape of background music while at the same time recording my voice to a cassette or CD. Then, when I've got a good master, I want to duplicate it myself (dual cassette and CD-RW). Would be extra nifty if I could mix in reverb, echo and other sound effects (though not necessary - the main thing is a quality, professional-sounding recording.).
What components do you use? Have not seen any posts on this. All replies greatly appreciated! |
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ForumMaster
USA
530 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2003 : 04:31:04 AM
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From: Adam Sent: 9/2/2002 3:03 PM
Nick Kemp (www.human-alchemy.co.uk) does most of his stuff on PC using Cool-Edit Pro and Acid Pro - he does get it digitally mastered when he is done on the creative stuff. There are some MP3's on his site of his work to give you an idea of quality (excellent IMO).
Although he does use a decent PC, pre-amp, mic and some very nice guitars <g> as well as some other musical whizzwhangs in boxes, my own experiments lead me to believe you can achieve very professional results with a half decent soundcard in your PC, a half-decent mic (my Shure all-purpose microphone cost me less than £30 and jacks straight into the sound card) and some basic software - if you can stretch to it, Coold Edit is great, Sonic Foundry's Acid Pro and Sound Forge are great (and demo's are available), but you can find a wealth of shareware and freeware that will do reasonable jobs. Then burn your resulting file yourself direct to CD.
Adam
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ForumMaster
USA
530 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2003 : 04:31:35 AM
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From: Crash Sent: 9/2/2002 8:36 PM
Have been looking at the same issue myself. My friends who are into making their own music suggest the most versatile and easy to work with is MP3. I am to look into this further soon and will let you know how I go. If anyone else has experience with creating stuff using MP3, and has any advice please respond.
Crash
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ForumMaster
USA
530 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2003 : 04:32:00 AM
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From: Adam Sent: 9/4/2002 5:51 PM
In general, composition and editing needs to be done in WAV or similar format. MP3 is a "lossy" compression format - it loses redundant/unnecessary information (a bit like JPG for pictures) - this means that if you repeatedley work on it (edit) and save, you lose data and quality.
If you want to produce good quality audio, first produce in WAV or similar. Then, if you want to save to CD, a standard CD burn application will produce a CD quality CD, from which you can also record to tape if you want to. If you want to distribute across the net, then there are many freeware applications that will readily convert your (admittedley rather large) WAV file to good quality MP3.
Many audio applications will let you use your PC as a multi track, so you can create you audio background (music, binaural drone/beat, whatever) and then lay your script down as a seperate track(s) - something like Acid Pro will let you do this and then, if you made your audio script in several sections, move your audio script around like a word processor.
Adam
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ForumMaster
USA
530 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2003 : 04:32:35 AM
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From: Crash Sent: 9/4/2002 8:20 PM
Adam,
Can you please answer the following for me.
When you burn a .wav file to your CD can that be directly played on any CD player, or do you have to save it to some other special format?
Approximately how long can your .wav file be (amount of recorded spoken word time in minutes) to fit on a standard CD-R?
If you multi-track, does this use up more space, thus reducing the length of recording you can fit on a CD?
Thanks for the advice,
Crash |
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ForumMaster
USA
530 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2003 : 04:33:01 AM
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From: Mindfull Sent: 9/6/2002 2:01 PM
Thanks to all of you that responded to my post about your recommendations for making CD's and audio tapes. So appreciated! Looks like using my computer is a good way to go. And, I see Philips is making mini shelf systems that have a 3 CD player, CD-RW, and a dual cassette deck. Might just put one of those to work as well and get rid of my boom box dinosaur. That way, I feel have the bases covered with more flexibility. Thanks again! |
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nick kemp
21 Posts |
Posted - 01/08/2005 : 04:53:57 AM
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| I missed this thread and I didn't know Adam was here either! <grin> IMO there are two ways to go with this, either record to CDRs which can now look very similar to CDs, but make sure you avoid using labels as these can jam a CD transport, better to print to CD. The advantage of CDRs is that you can do small runs. The fully glass mastered CD front means pressing a minimum of 500 CDs at any one time and this is the way to go if you are doing volume orders. Also make sure you have barcodes on all CD covers and ISBN numbers if this is going into stores! I have posted some articles on recording at www.human-alchemy.com as this is a subject I get asked a lot about! There are also samples of my stuff on the same site and my CDs can be found on all amazon, Wal Mart and Barnes and Noble online sites! |
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Dwayne
USA
4 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2006 : 7:40:49 PM
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| I been using a karoaki machine to make up my tapes,now I am thinking about adding a mixing board, so I just trying to find one that will work with my equipment. |
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Matrixman
United Kingdom
81 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2006 : 8:07:22 PM
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Hi
A Nice bit of kit of using with your PC is Cool edit pro, is a PC studio, and you can transfer any file format and turn it into any other format, you can even extrapolate, audio from DVDs, or and any video format, and turn it in to MP3 or any other audio file format. Plus you can edit, add sound effects run left and right channels, so you can create duel induction, programmes. Its does have a bit of a price tag, yet it is really cool to use. And it would be worth looking at.
You can even plug in a tape recorder, in to you PC MIC port and turn your old tapes in to MP3s etc.
Jay
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Recording CD's and Audio Cassettes
