Possible answer for recording closing and crash questions

[James E. Tausch]

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.

[Smoke14]

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.

Hi Erosman,

Thank You for your input. As far as the records go, I had the same problem with them. Also My tapes I am recording are tapes that have been used in the last year. These are accompianment tapes that we use for my choir.My machine is also newer-not new,but a good one .

But you do bring a good point to the table. My question then is why after some songs and not others?Is the time in between songs not uniform? SO many variables.

But you are right, TPB are working on a solution as we speak.

Just food for thought.

Carl

[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.

[longmorn3]

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.

 

I haven't even attempted to convert my cassette tapes to digital. I am working with vinyl LPs, for the most part in mint condition, for when I bought them, I used them only to make a cassette tape and then stored them in proper conditions. My observation is that it is not that the media that is causing the crash. I did convert a very noisy and abused record set for a friend, and the crashes were no more frequent during that conversion process. In my case, I do not record one whole side of an LP, but rather record each track individually and stop recording at the end of it. It is certainly possible that a very defective tape might cause a crash, but it is not a phenomenon I have observed with noisy vinyl. Have a great day.

 

Regards,

-Phil