Using multiple soundcards for separate recordings

[rsjohns2]

I am in the midst of a project of recording a vast number of cassette tapes on my computer for historical preservation reasons (mostly sermons and classes but with occasional music tapes as well). I've been using GoldWave to record the tapes. I have the RCA out jacks from the tape player going to the Line In on my soundcard. All this works great.

I was wondering if I added another soundcard, would I be able to run GoldWave a second time and have it capture a second tape at the same time? Or for that matter, could I theoretically add a third, etc. soundcard and record a third, etc. tape at the same time?

Thanks for any input,
Robert

[rsjohns2]

Looks like you can. I found this post: by DewDude420 » Fri Jul 31, 2009 4:10 pm which in part said:

on my 2.5ghz P4 machine with 2gb ram...I can open two copies of goldwave and record from two separate sound cards simultaneously without any error.

[mathyou9]

That'll certainly save you time. I just got a second sound card; haven't had to use the two simultaneously. Knowing that it's theoretically possible, it's something that I've pondered about.

[DewDude420]

Yeah, I had a guy that was paying me bunk for transferring 40 C120 cassette tapes to digital with full restoration...like i think i managed to talk him UP to $200...he didn't want to pay more than $75 originally. Wanna know the eerie part? These were also religious tapes. Not really sermons...but if you've ever heard of The Way International...it was copies of copies of Dr Wierwille's "Power for Abundant Living" class that he himself had recorded ages ago...but it was the full 40 cassette set of the entire class that people apparently at some point paid a good bit of money for and these were apparently copies that belonged in the private library of various Wierwille family members. I found out that at one point, bootlegs of the exact same tapes were selling for quite a bit...which meant I was sitting on a gold mine of audio that never saw the internet....and still hasn't since I lost the hard drives and fear that whoever owns the copyright might come right after me since it wouldn't take them very long to figure out who did the digital transfer (apprently not many copies exist)...that's neither here nor there. Dude didn't want to pay me anything for over 150 hours of work cuz he was on "a budget". In return, I gave him some rather shoddy restorations because...why should I waste my time for $1.30 hour? I've still got the mp3's....I just don't know where the hard drive that contains them are (the masters are on the hard drive...in a computer...now at my sisters..archived and password protected)

So I drug my butt on the project till the last minute and made a mad dash with my old Dell tower, two cassette decks, an Audigy 2 and M-Audio USB sound device and did exactly what you wanted to do. Two copies of goldwave recording from two separate sound cards. The reason this works is you're not trying to sync the stuff up later. If you were doing this for multitrack, I'd advise against it since the sound card clocks wouldn't match and you'd NEVER NEVER NEVER get things to sync up properly (in fact, i've had the same recording on the same card oddly drive samples and samples off without changing pitch or tempo).

But, you're doing individual recordings, so, you can load up as many copies of Goldwave as you've got the hardware and resources for and go with it. I don't know how many I'd say you can do. three would likely not be out of the question if it's a more modern PC....my current laptop (c2d P8700 - 2.53ghz, 6gb ram, win7) has done 16-track recording in multitrack from firewire....so I could likely run 8 copies of goldwave at once (if i had enough sound cards).

The only thing I can say is give it a try....you shouldn't encounter problems, but with the way sound cards drivers are made these days, you might wind up with latency and buffer issues.

But, yes, it is possible and I have done it. So have fun.

[mathyou9]

Yeah, I had a guy that was paying me bunk for transferring 40 C120 cassette tapes to digital with full restoration...

I hear ya, man; I've been there and done that. And like you, I did a pretty shoddy job as well. I had captured the audio at 44.1 kHz with my tape deck's high-speed dubbing engaged (2x speed.) Then I just changed the sampling rate of the final files to 22.05 kHz for normal speed. All without any other processing; just straight across from tape (and the guy I did it for was none the wiser.)

I think I knocked the entire project out in a matter of single-digit hours. Gotta love how people think hours of analog audio will magically process itself and split into separate tracks in a few minutes.

[edited to add]

rsjohns2,

Even at 22.05 kHz, my aforementioned high-speed-turned-normal-speed cassette transfers sounded better than I expected. I'd imagine that if you could somehow engage high-speed dubbing playback during transfer, and with multiple soundcards, you can knock this project out even faster. You'd just need to start out with a substantially high sampling rate. And then when you change the sample-playback rate to sound normal, it'd still have an above-par sample rate.