Ripping audio from analog sources

TidBITS Talk
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Thanks for the info. Unfortunately for me, all the tapes I recorded (mix tapes, from radio, etc.) have been encoded with Dolby-C. So if I were to get this deck, I’d need an external decoder.

Fortunately, my existing deck (an old Technics RS-TR373) still mostly works. But this model (like all 90’s era Technics equipment) is a nightmare to service - even things like changing the belts requires a complete teardown of each deck, including desoldering an internal cable.

I’ve been told (and I think I agree) that it will be cheaper and easier to get a used deck from some other brand (e.g. a Sony) and have it refurbished than to try to fix a 90’s Technics deck.

At least I’ve already ripped nearly all of my cassettes, but it still bothers me that it’s literally impossible to get anything new with the set of features that was dirt-cheap in the 90’s.

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Most of the tapes I am digitizing are of low quality, without Dolby NR, recorded from ancient vinyl (including 78 RPMs) so any digitization that works is good enough.

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Long term data storage … From this week’s New Scientist (subscription):

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Agree. I bought it direct from AlpineSoft and have used it since January of 2014 but Chris’ post reminded me to check on any updates. I was surprised that I could update the installed version to the current version without paying an upgrade fee.

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Speaking of old Technics gear, these three components of my system are still working. That stuff is really well made…pretty much everything else I bought during that era (80s-early 90s) from other brands, even Japanese brands, died long ago. I do miss my old Shure hyperelliptical stylus + cartridge though. It sounded a lot better than the only-PMount-available Audio Technica replacement I was forced to buy a few years ago.

And a funny note: the CD player is so old that it has a special “Emphasis” detector that compensates for a noise reduction process used on early CDs called Pre-emphasis.

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I have my Nakamichi 480 back! Here’s the story:

The eject button on the tape deck got stuck in 2008; it means there’s a problem with the eject cable. It is supposed to be an easy fix. I tried contacting local repair shops, but they didn’t know anything about Nakamichi’s.

The certified Nakamichi repair shop in the US is Electronics Service Labs in Connecticut. I exchanged memos with Jeff, the owner. He quoted $150 for eject repair, but promoted a complete overhaul (around $1500), with a warning that the backlog for estimates was 10-12 months, while pre-approved overhauls would get priority service.

In 2010 I shipped the deck to ESL, with a $75 deposit. I requested the estimate. The unit was received by ESL on 4/5/2010.

A year went by with no contact from ESL. Since the year backlog should have been up, I tried to contact ESL. No response.

Not knowing what to do about a repair shop that ghosted me, I waited. Finally, in 2021, I tried again. No response.

I was contemplating what to do, and had some discussions with an AI. And then I realized: I have a legal plan, which essentially means I have attorneys on retainer. So I opened a case on 7/4. This got bounced from attorney to attorney for reasons, but finally an attorney sent a letter and email to ESL on 11/20, demanding the return of the unit and my $75 deposit within 10 days. 3 hours later Jeff sent me an email!

Jeff claimed that they had examined the deck back in 2010 and determined that the repair cost would exceed $1000, to do a complete overhaul. That was his estimate: $1000. He never gave me an estimate for just fixing the stuck eject button.

I tried for getting the original problem repaired, but within a day after my response, Jeff shipped the deck back to me, with an invoice that said the estimate was declined so no service was performed, and he kept the $75 diagnostic fee.

So here we are. I’ve got my deck back after 15 years, with the original problem: a stuck eject button. He did remove the stuck cassette though. I’m out the $75 deposit and the cost to ship it to ESL. There never was any explanation why he didn’t give me an estimate back in 2010 nor reply when I tried to contact him directly.

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Sorry if this runs off-topic…

@mschmitt I’m not a fan of ESL either and wish there was another option for servicing those vintage Nakamichi decks. Congrats on getting that deck back from him after all this time.

My experience with ESL: I have a mid-80’s BX300 cassette deck that was having issues with the tape transport. Emailed Jeff once. No answer. Emailed him again. He then responded and gave me the same “recommended” $1500-ish “overhaul” along with the “12-18 month backlog on estimates” crapola. I doubt he’s overwhelmed with business so I think he’s just trying to milk the most profitable jobs for working on vintage equipment. Given that he’s been doing Nakamichi repairs for a while, my guess is that he’s probably semi-retired - which also may play into him wanting only refurb clients. Either way, as you note, there aren’t many factory trained people still out there that work on Nakamichis - and he obviously knows it.

I don’t know if this is something that could help you get your deck fixed, but I was able to DIY repair what was wrong with mine. Some on-line research gave me hope that the issue was the rubber idler wheel and belts. I found a vendor that quoted me < $50 for the parts. Some additional research led me to a procedure for this common repair.

Deck works fine now (although I came very close to totally borking the deck…).

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I used to use a Griffin iMic and Griffin’s app, Final Vinyl, for recording LPs. Unfortunately FV was a 32-bit Intel app, so is limited to old Macs now.

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@mschmitt You might try Merle’s Record Rack in Orange, CT. It’s a one man shop, but he performs repairs/refurbishment on a wide range of legacy equipment. The last time I was there, he had a few refurbished Nakamichi decks for sale, though I don’t recall the models.

(cc @technogeezer)

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Thanks for sharing what you did. From 2021 to 2023 I ripped my collection of reel-to-reel tapes using Audacity and a Behringer UFO202 which works for reel to reel as well as cassettes. It’s been a while so I don’t remember all the details, but Audacity has an online discussions and instructions that helped me a lot. I’ll share my experiences.

I had little trouble with the reel to reel tapes. They date from the mid-60s into the late 80s, and many were bought used whenever I came across them. The few acetate tapes I had tended to break when played; they could be spliced, but then might break again, so I didn’t spend much time on them. All the rest of the tapes are mylar, which held up very well. I did not notice any audio distortion or facing, but I’m not a serious audiophile and many of them were taped from an FM tuner. I recorded most of them myself, but did save the music on some of the used tapes. All are on 7-inch reels.

Cassettes were easier to handle, but they tended to jam. I can’t comment much about the quality, I recorded the cassettes to listen to when I was driving, so I didn’t pay much attention to quality. I only have a few commercial cassettes. The cassette decks and players tended to jam when playing tapes, probably because they had little used for years. If you want to work from cassettes, it would be worthwhile to test the decks/players for jams and try to fix them before recording. I have only tried fixing a couple.

I started out with a Sony 250A I bought in college, which was still operating when I started the project. The Sony was a low-end deck, and I was on a low-end budget in my student days, and it did a good job for many years. Sometime around the turn of the century I spotted a TEAC 1230 on the curb across the street, which I picked up, got it working, and used it along with the Sony lightly for many years.

Having two tape decks to compare made me more aware of something I had neglected before – the two channels played at different volumes on many of the tapes I had recorded. The difference seemed to have come from how the tapes were recorded. The origin seemed to have been a drop in how the Sony recorded one channel after I had used it for several years, and I lived with it as we used the tape decks less.

Then I started the project, I thought I could use the two decks to identify and fix the difference in channel volume. However after fiddling with several tapes, the Sony stopped and would no longer play tapes. That led me to dig into the Audacity instructions and learn how to balance the two channels and do everything on the TEAC, demonstrating how much better it was than the Sony.

I have bought a Behringer for vinyl disks, but have yet to launch that project. We still have a working stereo on the living room with a CD player, cassette deck, and the TEAC reel deck. We have not noticed any problems with audio CDs, CD-ROMs or DVDs. And that’s where we are now.

The main thing I would say is that it can be well worthwhile to rip music from reel-to-reel tapes. My Mylar tapes have survived well; I can’t say anything about post-1990 tapes because I never bought any. From my experience, reel-to-reel is more rugged than cassettes (both tapes and decks).