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What are you using to play cassettes? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6810 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes  Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 25 of 37 09 June 2011 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
I objected (in a tongue in cheek way) to Ari's thoughts on flashcards, but this one I'll agree with. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5248 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 26 of 37 09 June 2011 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, they were, and I still have an old NAD cassette deck. I did use cassettes for language study, but I find digital audio files much easier to work with. Now I listen to the sound tracks a lot more. It's much easier to listen to them two, three or four times when you can just select "repeat". And it's much easier to jump back and re-listen to a lesson that you went through a few days ago when you just have to open the right MP3 file instead of trying to locate the lesson on the tape. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6321 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 27 of 37 09 June 2011 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree.. if you want to jump to different exercises, it will be painful. I probably adapted my studies to the limitations of the cassette. I used to listen to one side of a cassette, from beginning to end, in one sitting. If a side is 20mins, it would take me about 40mins in total, including pausing and repeating some parts. That is also about my attention span for a single activity, so it worked quite well. Now that I have digitalised most of my cassettes, my digital files are about 20 minuites long, and I use them in a similar way. It's hard to find a suitable device, as most are designed with 3 minuite music tracks in mind. Editing into smaller track is possible but time consuming.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5806 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 28 of 37 10 June 2011 at 11:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've got a TCM-939 too, which I bought 5 years ago because the Open University still only accepted spoken assignments on cassette tape. The very next year they started accepting digital submissions, so it hasn't had much use, but I occassionally pick up old language materials that I need to digitise -- last month I got a Danish linguaphone set, for example.
I use a Zoom H4 recorder as my PC interface -- I never record direct onto the PCs internal sound chip as the signal picks up a lot of interference inside the PC case (the connection between the socket and the chip is not well screened from electrical noise) and even within the chip itself. The H4 is overkill if all you're looking for is a PC peripheral (the Zoom unit is a portable multitrack field recorder, aimed at musicians, researchers and journalists. It's quite handy if you're likely to ask target language speakers to record sentences for you, though...). If you are going to be digitising a lot of old material, you have a choice between getting a dedicated USB tape deck or a basic off-board sound interface. The advantage of the interface is that you can also plug a record deck into it if you pick up an old course on LPs.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6321 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 29 of 37 10 June 2011 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've found that most built-in sound cards on modern computers (2004- ) are mostly ok
for digitalising tapes. Maybe you had a 'ground loop.'? Make sure you are connecting to a 'line-level' input, not a 'mic-level' input, and that the input gain is set correctly. Tapes only have a dynamic range of about 50dB (a bit more with Dolby), which is much less than basic sound cards. Most record players (just about all 'vintage' ones) will need a pre-amp to raise the level of the signal to 'line-level.' The pre-amp will probably also do some EQ (RIAA), that is required for correct playback. Older amplifiers have 'phono' inputs that provide the necessary amplification and EQ, then you can route the tape recording socket to your sound card. I use a twin Sony deck, with a 'relay function.' You can set it playing, and it plays back two cassettes on both sides, which makes things easier. Set Dolby to 'B' if the tape has a Dolby logo, otherwise leave it off. The hiss might sound less with it on, but you are incorrectly reducing the high frequencies, making 'fricative' vocal sounds more difficult to hear. For noise reduction, audacity is ok, Adobe Audition (with adaptive noise reduction filter) is a step up, and a dedicated noise reduction package, like 'iZotope RX 2' gives the best results. With this software, you can remove even strong tape hiss hardly without compromising the original signal at all. But if you are just using the tapes yourself, it's probably not worth going to such lengths. If you want to merge a stereo track into a mono track, it is best to run an adaptive phase correction filter first, in case one of the channels is slightly out of sync of the other, due to recording/playback head misalignment. I don't know if Audacity can do this, Audition and iZotope can. If you listen to the stereo track with headphones, and it is out of sync a little, it can give the effect that the audio is 'swimming around your head.' It can lead to a slight loss of quality if you merge the track before correcting this. This is probably far too much information for most people, sorry, but perhaps useful for those digitalising courses for others. Edit: Just a couple more thoughts. For encoding of a 44.1KHz noise-free mono voice recording, I can't hear any differance beyond 48kps bitrate for MP3. You might set it at 64kps, just to be on the safe side. For recordings with noise or music, you will need to use a higher bitrate to preserve the quality. Always keep a WAV backup of the original unedited recording, so that you can come back at a latter date when you have more experience, or the tools have improved. Edit again: Some devices have a problem with timing when VBR (variable bit rate) encoding is used, making the device behave strangely when rewinding/FF. Some devices also don't handle very low bitrates very well (such as 32kps). MP3 has the best compatability, so it's probably better to use it as opposed to more efficient formats such as OGG or AAC. So my recomendation is 44.1kHz Mono 64kps CBR MP3 for language material, unless there is music or significant noise. In that case, 96 or 128kps. Around the late 1980s, I believe, tape producers stopped using an adhesive made from whale oil, and switched to a synthetic substance, which can break down under high humidity conditions, making the tape 'gooey,' and making a mess on the playback heads. You will notice the playback sounding duller and duller as the muck piles up on the head, and it's also ruining the cassette. This can be treated fairly successfully by baking the cassettes at a low temperature, google for more info. Hope that's useful. I'll stop indulging myself now. Edited by DavidW on 11 June 2011 at 7:52pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5140 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 30 of 37 11 June 2011 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
In my opinion on the other hand, to swoon after the latest technology is infantile and even slavish. Cassettes even hold a few objective advantages over digital media, like DavidW has mentioned. Additionally, analogue sound can be warmer, nicer, and more suitable for language learning. Finally, at least for some of us a little bit older, cassettes posses a certain charm to hold and use. A lot of valuable material is still available on cassette only, so a cassette playback device should be part of the language learner's toolbox.
Where did you come across this? Edited by Juаn on 11 June 2011 at 4:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| carlonove Senior Member United States Joined 5781 days ago 145 posts - 253 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 31 of 37 11 June 2011 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cassettes...just sound better.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5806 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 32 of 37 11 June 2011 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
A few UK charities now run specialist bookshops in major towns and cities, and one of my local ones has a good stock of language books. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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