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RMT encoding projects

I am doing these encodes for these reasons:
  1. come up with a few replacements for poor-quality RMT shows. So far, the projects have yielded over 150 upgraded shows.
  2. "prime the pump" to encourage others (with more skills or better sources, equipment, etc) to encode those CBS Radio Mystery Theater tapes they have in the closet.
  3. find replacement passages for otherwise-good shows with missing chunks
  4. give back to the RMT community, who seem to be the niftiest set of people on the net.
  5. increase listenership of RMT in the general community. It was a great show that most normal people never heard. :-)
  6. increase interest in HB's sales of RMT, assuming he ever starts to sell them.

Completed encodes are crossposted to both news:alt.binaries.sound.radio.oldtime and news:alt.binaries.sounds.radio.cbsrmt.

project name and status source # of tapes # of shows received completed and returned to lender posted
JR, next in line ??? 4 boxes ??? i20080327
FB2, currently encoding, almost done!. Major delays due to system crashes and job loss (then job gain and buying a house!). :-( back in the saddle again as of 20080501. ??? 66 100 20040522
KB2, completed and now posting See notes on KB below. ~30 ~60. 20030610 20040726 currently posting
NA2, completed Absolutely lovely tapes of Canticle for Liebowitz, and one RMT and some NPR rebroadcasts of Nightfall. This will likely be the best-sounding CFL in existence at that time. 8 CFL, 1 RMT, 6 Nightfall 20031003 20040315 20040401
OZ, completed Nice sounding RMT shows, potential for many upgrades. ~30 ~30 20031003 20040214, archived on rmtup-13.txt 20040322
KB, completed KCBS in California, late 80s rebroadcasts of the original shows. Good sound. 60Hz buzz, easily filtered. Generally complete shows with no commercials; some are missing the intro. KCBS usually chopped everything after "the entire production was under the direction of Himan Brown." So no closing music. Some shows have very flat dynamics; the recorder must have had the ALC circuit engaged. ~100 ~200 20030610 20031231, archived on rmtup-14.txt, rmtup-15.txt, rmtup-16.txt 20040214
BM2, completed Chicago. Nice sound; many have missing outros but have commercials.. Some gaps. 16 32 20030315 20030731, archived on rmtup-11 20031029
NA, completed. Wisconsin. Nicely recorded, with the tape flip happening between acts 2 and 3. 14 18 20030314 20030506 archived on rmtup-05 20030715
DF, completed California ~17 33 20030313 20030418, archived on rmtup-08 20030530
BM Chicago. Good sound, some have cutoff intro/outro. One has speed variations. 3 6 20030304 20030306, archived on rmtup-07 20030411
FB Virginia. Some cutoff intro/outro 6 12 20030204 20030220, archived on rmtup-07 20030402
JT Florida. Commercials out, Some intros missing. No flip-over gap. Cases damaged, but the actual tape sounds good. 12 24 200301xx 20030209, archived rmtupg-06 20030314
WIP Romulus in New Jersey. The shows were taped off WIP 610 in Philadelphia. Commercials in, intros and outros complete. Flip-over gaps. Crosstalk, static, fading. Some very clear. 40+ 36 FIXME FIXME, archived on rmtup-04, continued on rmtupgrade-06. FIXME

basic process

I'm not an audiophile. I'm interested in putting new encodes so collectors and traders can benefit. I will listen to constructive criticism, but if you have very strong feelings about the way I should do things, then I encourage you to encode and post shows that are better than mine.

At any rate here's how I'm doing it.

  1. punch out the write-protect tabs!
  2. play the cassettes on a DX-392 shortwave/cassette unit.
  3. line out of the player to line in on a 2000 server's soundcard.
  4. digitize the sound (22kHz, 16bit) using freeware Scanner Recorder. I normally use it for recording scanner audio (built-in VOX!) but works great for this too.
  5. import .wav into Cool Edit. Trim off extraneous bits (lead in, lead out, tape flip). The resulting file is 130-140MB, depending on running time.
  6. Save an archival copy of the "raw" .wav file; losslessly ".ape" it to save about 30% space.
  7. identify background noise from "silent" passage. Use this pattern to lightly clean up the audio.
  8. normalize to 0dB
  9. save this "cooked" .wav, ape it for archiving.
  10. encode the .wav with LAME VBR (Variable Bit Rate). The upside to VBR is that, bit for bit, you get better quality. The downside is that not all players get the time right, or handle when the bitrates fall to very low bitrates in simple passages. The VBR encode will be 15-20MB in size.
  11. burn all related files to CD. The files (raw and cooked versions aped, mp3, noise definitions, cooledit .pk files, etc) take about 200MB per show.
  12. upload to .mp3 to news:alt.binaries.sounds.radio.cbsrmt and news:alt.binaries.sound.radio.cbsrmt. with powerpost in the efficient yEnc encoding scheme.
  13. return tapes and new CDs to the tape owner

$Id: encodes.orb,v 1.4 2008/05/29 02:31:27 mouse Exp $

cbsrmt.mousetrap.net © 1994-2005
RMTdb text © 2000-2005 various authors (see credits on each record);
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