I am a student working on a project where we are developing a digitization plan for a museum. The museum wishes to digitize their cassette tapes. I am recommending Wavelab as a software option. I am a novice and I have a few questions I was hoping this board could answer:
Does Wavelab 8 create BWF (Broadcast Wave Format) files?
What are the benefits of using Wavelab to digitize old cassette tapes, do you think?
The computer we are using is a Mac OSX 10.8.2 and has 2GB of RAM. Is that compatible with Wavelab?
What is the sample rate and bit depth of the Wavelab 8?
I do this quite a lot, and apart from the ease of use of the editor (although, like any software, there’s a learning curve), the builtin plugins are more than adequate for the restoration of cassette tapes. For restoration of more damaged parts, the Spectrum Editor can be extremely effective.
As answered before, this is fine, but I would recommend one other thing though: get a good quality external (USB) audio interface. Two channel should be fine, and I think in the range of $ 150 - 200 should be more than adequate. It will hugely improve your very important first step; the analog to digital conversion. Also ofcourse a good quality cassette player (adjusted for the type of tape played) is needed, but I’m sure you have that covered.
I second this recommendation, and would like to recommend Yamaha/Steinberg Cl1. It is small, simple, inexpensive (bought mine a year and a half ago for just under $100), and does a very clean job (IMHO).