Returning veteran speccy game converter, looking for some help making sound samples.

edited April 2012 in MIA/STP/SDP
Lo folks, looking for abit of help.

Right, converted thousands of speccy games over in the past, before the advent of tzx. Not a great stretch to say a bloody huge chunk of the existing .sna, .z80, .tap are due to my painful efforts :) Some of the tzx as well, thou frankly those were direct ports of my basic TAPs.

Ahem, right, back on topic.

Had a go sampling direct to the PC, but the quality was terrible.
Now im not an expert at sampling so I could use some help.

1: Do you think I need a stand alone sound card? Or should the onboard one suffice? Its a brand new board.

2: Does it matter what im using to play the tapes? New tape player, but, bad results!

Oh..and the best suggested port to use, like I said, Ive had a go at this before, and was dissapointed, but I have a hell of the lot of games I would like to get into the public arena, so, yknow, help me, help the speccy scene!

Oh, I should be clear what i want to achieve here! A perfect sound file, that runs fine on its own, without having to filter it.
Post edited by Vaxalon on

Comments

  • edited April 2012
    Thought I recognised the name Vaxalon, I've got CD's with lots of readme files with your name all over them.

    I suggest you PM Andrew Barker, he's considered the expert when it comes to transferring tapes to PC.

    Good luck!
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
  • edited April 2012
    Dont get me started on that cd *shudders* I send 5 thousand or so snaps to a PD company...several hundred self written txt files...and what did the guy do? batch rename the bloody lot to .sna.

    But hey, that CD didnt half get the ball rolling in the right direction :)
  • edited April 2012
    Hi Vax,

    Have you tried Tony's Guide and Videos:
    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/TZXGuide.pdf
    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/TZXGuide-lofi.zip
    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/TZXGuide-hifi.zip

    I use a WH Smiths tape deck, had an Alba R170 before that
    with my PC and an external USB sound card (from ebuyer).
    Seems to work fine.

    What you have to watch out for is the Hard Hitting limit which seems to be -6db.
    Anything above that will be clipped and it will effect your sample. Keep within -9db ~ -6db

    If you examine the sample after recording, it should be nice and round, nice sine waves, sometimes digital filtering makes it like castle turrets.

    Give it a whirl and share some samples if you want us to look into it further
  • edited April 2012
    Well happily ive roped my brothers old professional sound system into it. Now if i can just figure out what a equaliser actually does to spectrum tapes....:)

    Thanks for the info thou, that will help!
  • edited April 2012
    I remember you from that CD too. Didn't you also create several short BASIC games too? If they were orginal efforts, consider uploading them to WoS. :-)
  • edited April 2012
    Create? noooo might have typed a few up but...hm...I think i did upload my one attempt at an adventure game thou :) Orstalon (barely started it really)..or..somesuch, any similarity to dr who is entirely subconcious!
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