A little help please...

I'm finally looking to get back into trading after ten years away. Any suggestions on software/easy ways to get stuff on to CDR to do trades? Everything I have is on tape. Thanks!

Welcome ! Several people have found themselves in the same boat on this one. The easiest way to turn tapes to CD is to buy Music Match Jukebox (can be downloaded), and connect a tape deck to your PC through the Line In jack. This will produce a WAV file, which you can then tracksplit and burn to CD using Nero or similar CD burner software. Sometimes you'll need to clean up the recordings a bit as well, Cool Edit Pro is one of the better tools for this. The best bit is that you get to listen to your old tapes while recording them to the hard disk.

Average New Order gig seems to take up about 450MB per side of tape....

Also be careful when "cleaning" up the recording (noice-cancelling etc.). If you're too aggressive in the process, you may get a metallic and "tinny" sound. Sometimes it's better to leave the noise...

I use SoundForge when recording. If you burn the CD with Nero you can burn one big continuous wav file and add track markers (track indicators) in Nero. Very convenient for live recordings.

/TLV

Thanks for the info. I'll give things a try and let y'all know when I'm ready to trade. I mostly need post-1989 shows, though I'm sure some older stuff I don't have has surfaced in the last few years and/or maybe technology will provide better quality versions. I mastered a few shows - Philly 86, 87 and 89, Lake Compounce and Reading Fest 89, Montreal, Toronto and Pittsbugh 87. Glad to see some of these outlasted my time trading and are still floating around out there.

Don - what have you got in the way of tapes ? I'm happy to trade tape for CD or tape/tape - mail me offlist please !