James E. Tausch

Regarding Carl's question and observation, "My question then is why after some songs and not others? Is the time in between songs not uniform?", that is one of the key points in what we are trying to do, what is happening, and how the Golden Records program responds. For a multitude of possible reasons, the time between songs can be far from uniform. Using a system that seems tied to a set period - whether two seconds or whatever - before the entire program shuts down automatically requires even more micromanagement (I.e. near constant monitoring of the recording process). That can make it a big and intimidating job for someone like me who is trying to both archive and once again make available for use an analog musical library built up over about 45 years; around 1500 LP and cassette titles with who knows how many songs and tracks. Which brings to mind the subject of my other post, Can anyone offer a better, quicker, way to enter song and artist info other than manually one track at a time? Which brings to mind another issue with my Golden Records experience to date, I seem to have just as often encountered the results where the time between tracks was so short that the entire side got recorded as one track. This required spending even more time doing just a single side of a cassette because I had to enter breaks for each song to make the results of the session into something useful instead of one generic "unknown" file 16 to 22.5 minutes long. Still a fan though. I'd be more than willing to continue to work with NCH and Golden Records instead of continuing to look for a way to do my analog to digital transfers to and with my 64 bit Windows Vista system if the system, with NPH's support, turns out to work smoothly and efficiently on a reasonably consistent basis.

Well, I'll take a shot at how forums like this are supposed to work and offer my $.02 worth on the problems and questions some of you have reported. I'm doing this as a new topic post because I want to get this out and I don't have the time right now to search through all the topics (again). Keep in mind that I am a user, not an author. (Who remembers Tron? Hands anyone?) In my first extended session, I saw hints of what folks have talked about. Interestingly, I only saw the crash message on those times when I'd stepped away and the cassette had reached the end. Since I couldn't tell NCH what had happened, I restarted Golden Records and continued with my analog to digital archiving of my personal library. Overall, I would call my first extended session a success. In any case, here are a couple of thoughts from someone who has been into music on several levels for a long time: 1) For me, and I suspect many others, we are working with cassette tapes that haven't been played, or rewound, for many years. It has been decades since I regularly played cassette tapes and ten or more years since a cassette deck had a place in my home entertainment set up. It wouldn't surprise me if a significant percentage of my cassette tapes haven't been played for a quarter century or more. 2) My cassette player has been in the same inadequate storage conditions as my cassette tapes and LPs. Trying to do something about saving my library is how I wound up getting to know about NCH, Golden Records, and these support forums. So, given all that, and given the lesser quality of many factory made pre-recorded tapes, is it any surprise that some tapes stall out at times when they are played for the first time in 10 to 30 or 40 years? From what I've seen, the "crash" occurs when while in the active recording mode no music is detected for more than 2 seconds. (That's the on-screen message. To me it seems like at least a 5 second period before the "crash" or timeout occurs.) The on-screen message calls it a crash. But is it really? My impression is that when playing old cassette tapes, some stall out is far from unheard of. If the stall occurs during a Golden Records session, the system senses this and ends the recording session. When that happens to me, I just restart from the stall point. Thinking about using my cassette player for the first time in 10 to 15 years makes me shudder when I think of what I asked it to do. How many of us would expect a car to run perfectly if the ignition key hadn't been turned once in 15 years? So, maybe at least some of the "stops recording" and "crash" problems can be explained by the quality and age of the tapes and tape playing equipment - and by NCH's Golden Records doing what it is programmed to do: shut down when no music is received for a period of time. One would think that TPB at NCH who monitor issues are already at work on a patch to have the session simply end when no music is received for a period of time instead of the current response of shutting down the whole program. As another poster said, it is an inconvenient problem; not a catastrophic one. I wouldn't expect to have the same experience once I get to my LP record albums though.

When I looked at the menus, I didn't see anything specifically addressing this. So, for my first session I've been adding the identifying information - my usual minimum is song title, artist, and, when applicable album name - one track at a time; manually deleting each generic "unknown" title and then entering the information one at a time for each song and/or each album. For some - not all - cassette tapes, the dead space between tracks is too short for a break to be detected and inserted. For those recordings, that is additional time and labor to turn that block recording into the individual tracks and songs it is supposed to be. My current feelings are that so far this - working with Golden Records - is a good thing. It is certainly way better than before when I had all the right equipment and connections, but my computer (Vista 64 bit) could never see, hear, play, record/archive, or do anything with home music from anything but a CD. (For CDs the new Vista Windows Media Center is the cat's meow. But, it seems to be a total dead end when it comes to music from analog sources.) With over 1500 LPs and cassettes to try to save from the ravages of inadequate basement storage conditions, it is a labor of love that will eventually become something close to hard labor - and a huge amount of time. (That's 1500 titles. I shudder when I estimate the number of individual songs and tracks. Plus, that doesn't include my not-factory made tapes; which I'd already figured I'd have to do manually one song or track at a time.) So, can anybody offer any help? Any suggestions for easier or less time consuming ways to do what I want to do? I realize that I'm unlikely to be able to do anything as convenient or fast as CDs. But, any improvement would help with the mountain I'm facing. Thanks!