Reliable recording software recommendations

[Owy]

Hi there,


I am transferring quite a quantity of FM master cassettes onto PC- a number of which I have posted here. I have been using Audacity, which seemed ok at first, but is proving to be somewhat unreliable (recording with unexplained noises/clicks on the recording, recording sounding distorted, crashing, etc).


Could anyone recommend a more reliable software for this? I'd be willing to shell out for something if I knew it would work more smoothly.

My setup as stated on the control panel properties is:

Packard Bell ixtreme M3720
Rating 4.8 Windows Experience Index (whatever that means!)
Processor: Intel (R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8300 @2.50Ghz 2.0GHz
4.00 GB RAM
64 bit operating system
Running Windows Vista

Thanks for any comments anyonbe can make


Owy

[AAR.oner]

a lot of the PC folks seems to like Audition...

i used Cakewalk and Sonar years ago, both are excellent

[Thulani]

What version of Audacity are you using?

[Owy]

Originally Posted by kill_them_all1000

What version of Audacity are you using?

Hiya,

1.3, I think- the latest version.

[Thulani]

Don't know what the problem can be. Audition or Audacity, both should have same results. It's all in the hardware when you make transfers. Frankly, I listened yours and didn't find anything distorted or bad.

You can try Wavosaur or Free Audio Recorder

[Owy]

Originally Posted by kill_them_all1000

Don't know what the problem can be. Audition or Audacity, both should have same results. It's all in the hardware when you make transfers. Frankly, I listened yours and didn't find anything distorted or bad.

...The stuff that I've uploaded is fine- it's the stuff I'm trying to transfer at the moment that I'm having trouble with.

Looking at the Audacity Wiki and puttering about forums, etc I think it might be insufficient RAM on my machine for reliability, but I'm not sure.

You can try Wavosaur or Free Audio Recorder

...thanks for the recommendations, I might try them.

Cheers

[lordsmurf]

I only use Sound Forge for converting tapes and records. It's good for restoring, fixing and filtering audio, too!

Honestly, the audio card is more important than the software. Pro software with a crap audio cards yields crappy audio. If your audio card is part of your motherboard, for example, you're not getting the most out of your tapes/vinyls. Dedicated audio cards tend to work better, with much better SNR. It doesn't have to be expensive either, any decent $25-75 range SoundBlaster or Turtle Beach card is great.

EDIT: I see you're in UK, so here some UK links: Sound Forge and SoundBlaster

[Owy]

Honestly, the audio card is more important than the software. Pro software with a crap audio cards yields crappy audio. If your audio card is part of your motherboard, for example, you're not getting the most out of your tapes/vinyls. Dedicated audio cards tend to work better, with much better SNR.

Hmmm... that's interesting- I think I do have an integral audio card- so that could be a problem. The sound quality when the system works, however, doesn't appear problematic. It just seems unreliable in working smoothly- which leads me to believe that it might be insufficient RAM.
However, thsnks for the advice- something else for me to consider!

cheers,

[Owy]

[i]EDIT: I see you're in UK, so here some UK links:

Thanks!
Appreciated.

[Fried Chicken Boy]

4GB of RAM should be fine for your OS to record audio. You might try a Beta release of Audacity. In the notes on the website, the developers are saying that the stable release can be buggy in Vista and 7. As it's free, can't hurt to give it a try. Just make sure you do a clean install.

I would also recommend Reaper; very solid but also more complex (read: bells and whistles). Completely free and uncrippled to try, US$60 to buy a non-commercial license. If you don't mind a nag-screen, I think you can keep using it beyond the trial period for free.

Regarding soundcards, I don't know what you're budget is and Turtle Beach and SoundBlaster are certainly good cards but I would recommend the M-Audio 2496. It's an entry-level pro audio card and the sound quality is superior to virtually anything close to that price range (right now about US$90; not sure what that transfers to in GBP). Only drawback is that it's strictly stereo if that matters to you; no 5.1 or 7.1 surround with this thing.

Btw, +1 for Adobe Audition. I've been using it since it was Cool Edit Pro (some 10+ years ago) and still get great results but you're gonna pay for it (US$300-350). There were a couple bugs with it in Vista and 7 but Adobe released a patch not long ago that seemed to take care of most of the issues.

[Owy]

[quote=Fried Chicken Boy;1397444]4GB of RAM should be fine for your OS to record audio. You might try a Beta release of Audacity. In the notes on the website, the developers are saying that the stable release can be buggy in Vista and 7. As it's free, can't hurt to give it a try. Just make sure you do a clean install.

Yes, I'm using the beta version. A lot of the time it's fine, but I am getting unexplained clicks and stuff. I went to PC World today, and they advised that 4gig of ram should be ok too. Looks like a soundcard is probably the way to go though.

Many thanks for your comments. Really useful.

Cheers.