recording

[crabbyorangeton]

can i rip reel to reels that are 2 hr long

[garym]

Re: recording

can i rip reel to reels that are 2 hr long

Yes, but you'll need some software other than dbpa to do it. You'll need to connect the audio out of your reel to reel player to your computer audio input. Then use a program such as AUDACITY to record the tape as it is being played. Then you'll have a digital copy.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwivv6_-kZrzAhVPSjABHfUZC3IQFnoECAYQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.audacityteam.org%2F&usg=AOvVaw3-_gEDCN7gzc2bfAseMMKD

[itsmonikaa1]

Re: recording

Yes, you can record as long you want to do.

[RobertBryan]

Re: recording

yes you can! it supported much longer as you can.

[schmidj]

Re: recording

I'd call this digitizing or transferring, ripping typically refers to moving already digitized data to a different storage medium, most often from a CD or DVD to some form of random access media like a hard drive.

The maximum length you can "rip" is determined by several factors The first is the maximum filesize permitted by the file system that the file is being stored in. FAT32 (common on removable media) only allows 4 GB files. NTFS, common on hard drives and EXFAT, an alternative for removable media, allow 16 Exabytes An Exabyte is 1000 times 1000 times 1000 larger than a Gigabyte, so it is most unlikely that you have anywhere enough audio in total to even begin to create a file that large. But it is not hard to hit the 4GB limit on FAT32. And some software limits you to even smaller files.

The next set of factors is the sample rate, bit depth and number of channels which, when multiplied together tell you how many bits per second your audio file is using. CDs use a sample rate of 44,100 samples per second. They use 16 bits depth per sample. And there are two channels Audio for video (TV) is typically 48,000 samples per second, or close to that, for compatibility with the number of video frames per second. Professional video storage these days typically uses a bit depth of 24 bits.

Since you are digitizing analog audio, you get to chose the sample rate and bit depth when you open a new digital file to record into. If this is for audio only, and you are not planning any fancy editing using, let us say, pitch correction or time compression, then 44,100 (or 48,000, it matters little) is a fine sample rate. If you plan to burn the digitized audio to a CD at any point, stick to the CD sample rate, 44,100 to avoid having to do a sample rate conversion to burn the CD.

As I mentioned, CDs have a bit depth of 16 bits. The bit depth is what determines the dynamic range, the difference between being so loud it is starting to distort and being so soft that the residual noise is louder than the program. 16 bits is adequate for just about any music where someone (the mastering engineer) has adjusted the levels to use all or most of the available dynamic range. But I prefer to use 24 bit audio when transferring or editing audio, to provide an additional margin if I didn't have the audio level set correctly when digitizing the source.

For all practical purposes, there is no reason to use higher sample rates such as 96,000 samples per second if all you are doing is digitizing a tape. All you are doing is wasting a lot of storage space (the file will be twice or more as large). If your file is going to end up on removable media, and it has two hours of audio to store it may not fit if you use a higher sample rate.

One other item: You are not clear, is this one long two hour piece of audio that will all end up as a single file or is it a two hour compilation of a number of songs. If it is the latter, after digitizing the audio you are probably going to want to split the two hour file into separate files for each song. Unfortunately, there is nothing automatic to do that, at least with any quality. I'm not familiar with all the tools in Audacity (I use different editing software), but I'd assume there is a way of inserting "markers", digital bookmarks you can place at the beginning and end of each song and use them to create "regions" in the digital file corresponding to each song. Then hopefully Audacity includes a tool which can extract each of these regions creating a new individual file for each song. Finally, you will want to add the metadata to each of these files with the name of the son, the artist, etc. As you can see, this can be a somewhat drawn-out process, but it is one which recording and mastering engineers perform many times as a part of their work.