• 41 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • if using my own player might be considered “good enough,” couldn’t I just hook my Walkman’s headphone output to the line in or mic input on my computer and do it myself?

    absolutely, i was responding to your question

    any advice on what I should do to get the best quality transfer that I can?

    other users have mentioned you can get a converter online, but the “you get what you pay for” maxim applies to electronics maybe more than anything else. the difference in quality between “consumer” and “professional” audio gear is getting narrower, but it’s still there-- everything just depends on how much you want to spend

    not sure how I need to set the volume on the Walkman

    if the walkman has a “line out” port, you’d use that to plug into your “line in” on your recording device. you can use the headphone jack, but that signal is already amplified, so you’ll have to adjust the output volume to where the input meter is the highest it can be without ever clipping (going ‘red’). older consumer gear will have more noise (hiss) than anything professional. especially an amplified signal, as in a headphone jack. and that’s where the money for pro stuff goes–lower noise floor. more information

    edit: on a whim i did some looking and found this lol

    you could just buy that, dump the recording down to a SD card, and then return the device the next day. done.
    i had no idea they made such things, but i haven’t really kept up with the music/audio industry since i left



  • no new film camera produced and the price of film

    it’s the same with analog audio. reel to reel tape actually disappeared for a bit because no one manufactured it anymore, but some company (forget who) finally started making it again for the audiophiles. one reel of tape is was, 10 years ago, ~$300 and gives you 15 minutes of recording time, if you’re running it at high speed for the best quality. no idea what the state of the business is in now, i was never a gear head and never kept up with any of it


  • 1st thing i would do would be call the radio station–they might have a digital copy already, since it’s a performance. or they might have the equipment you’d need to get it digitized. just don’t leave the tape with them, unless you make a copy.

    failing that, the public library might also have tape to digital conversion gear, depending on how big/well funded the library is.

    last resort would be a recording studio, which might cost lots of money per hour, and it’ll have to be converted in real time–play the tape from start to finish, while the computer ‘records’ it. if the studio don’t have a top of the line gourmet tape deck, then they can take just take the output of your own player and plug it into protools, just ask for the highest resolution/bitrate in a lossless format

    edit: i forgot another option, if you’re in the states. you might try your state archives, just google the name of your state along with “archive”, it should be a .gov address. they might actually be interested in the recording for their own digital collection, and would definitely have the necessary gear to get it digitized. the tricky part is they would need the permission of the radio station and/or whoever owns the copyright to post it publicly


  • i was a recording engineer during the time analog recording was just starting to get surpassed by digital, and of course there are still people who will die on the “analog is always best forever and ever” hill

    but it’s to the point where if you’re not a completely-obsessed-to-the-point-no-one-can-stand-being-around-you audiophile, you’re not going to be able to tell the difference between an analog source and a digital one pretending to be analog

    the pros of digital just simply can’t be outweighed by the pros of analog anymore

    photography might be an area where digital hasn’t caught up, since film’s resolution is down to the molecular level, but that won’t be the case forever (if it even is the case, i’m not a photographer)


  • i was addicted to facebook. i started getting away by just not looking at it for longer periods of time: 1 day, 1 week, month, etc. it stayed like that for a long time. then i went through and deleted everything i ever posted, replied, commented-- yes it took forever, but it ended up as just a blank profile with my name on it. finally i deactivated the account, then deleted it

    time wasted on facebook: way too fucking much
    time spent regretting deleting it: absolute zero

    i’ve seen enough vacation/cat/baby photos to last 10 lifetimes, and if my friends can’t talk to me through texting, then i guess they must not have anything important to say

    fuck facebook
    i’m just glad i immediately found insta, twitter, tiktok, all the other bullshits boring and pointless right off the bat, so never dealt with those





  • violate Wikipedia’s rules and escalate tensions over bias accusations

    after being alive over the last ~10 years, i just can’t understand how people still think “rules” matter to republicans. there’s literally a convicted felon rapist in the white house and people are still talking about rules, laws, ethics, the constitution, and everything else that USED TO matter.

    they’re getting every single thing they want, and it’s not “rules” that’ll ever stop them