Zoom Gear & Home Recording Forum

My father was a sound engineer in the 1960's and 70's. My mum wants a clear out and my dad would like to listen again to his old recordings. I'd like to help him and make a digital archive of the recordings which he could access easily. The tapes include music as well as plenty of film dialogue including A Clockwork Orange on which he was sound recordist. All the recordings were made on his Nagra which is still in good working order.

Is the best way to do this using the MTR mode to record the mono output of from the Nagra?

Thanks for any thoughts.

I'd say that was overkill in terms of effort, since your end goal is to have something that "he could access easily" -- which, for quality, would probably be a library of audio CD-Rs, and those would be 16-bit/44.1kHz stereo. {After creating the full quality CDs, you might want to rip them into decent bit-rate MP3s and populate an MP3 player with them for quick access to the whole library.}

I'd probably get a simple Y cable that takes the mono in, and produces two mono outputs which can be fed to left & right channels of a common stereo mode input. (This is not a stereo splitter which has a stereo plug at one end and a pair of mono plugs at the other!)

Using MTR mode will likely mean having to run a mastering operation with center panning to produce a stereo result after the initial recording transfer... Lots of time wasted if that operation is in real-time.

First off Clockwork Orange was one of my Favs , ...........And second off the Nagra -> H4n is a workable config , but you dont need MTR mode

Just take a Regular Mono to Mono single cable , and in Stereo Mode , input the Mono cable to Input 1 of the Zoom , then Klik the Menu button on the side , use the scroll wheel to select INPUT , Push the wheel in to Select it , then Select 1&2 as input , Menu again , Input again , then scroll DOWN until you see MONO MIX Mode -> select ON

You are ready to record . in MONO .

Now you can select whatever Bitrate you want , MP3 320 gives a good balance between File size and Audio quality , but as Wulf said WAV 16 bit for preservation quality .

Next you want a BIG USB Harddrive to put all that stuff on .

And then send me the Nagra !!!!!!

Thanks for both replies ( Wulfraed and AxFixer). I'm gonna use AxFixer's solution as it doesn't need a new cable.

Thanks for your help - I wouldn't have figured out how to use stereo mode to record in mono. I'll let you know how I get on.

So If Mom wants a Clear out ....... How do I get that NAGRA from you !!!!!

Now I'm struggling how to make a cable up to do this. I have some banana jacks for the line output from the Nagra (the nagra just has a live and an earth output) and i have the correct sex (xlr) cannon plug for the other end. This is a 3 pin plug and I'm not sure how I should wire it. From wikipedia it look like pin1 is ground and pin 2 live. Pin 3 though is return - not sure what this is). So I've made a cable up
Nagra ground -> xlr pin 1
Nagra live -> xlr pin 2
The cable works but is noisy (should i be using pin3?)

The other problem I have is that I'm not sure how to use the dials on the nagra in combination with the recodring volume on the Zoom to set a recording level. Unless i set the "Line and Playback" dial on the Nagra to a very low level (less than -60dB) I find that I have to set the record volume on the Zoom to less than 1 to stop it redlining (where the zoom recording scale goes from 1 - 100).

I guess I'm just stubling in the dark a bit here so any advice very welcome.
Thanks, Andy

Hi,

I'm a french sound engineer and this is my first post here.
I've been using Nagras for years but I'm not looking to buy one as I still have one ore two on my shelves...



You should connect pin 3 to pin 1 to get a proper unbalanced signal. You could also try using a male 1/4' mono instrument jack on the Zoom side, which would have the advantage of a lower sensitivity.



The problem with the banana plugs output on the Nagra 4.2 is that it is very hot: 4.4V (+15dBU) for 0dB on the modulometer, which means that you can get signals as high as +25dBU. Much too high for the Zoom. The best solution would be to use the mixer "Tuchel" plug on the left side of the machine and use pin 7 (ground) and pin 3 (hot). You'll get a 560 mV signal (18 dB lower than the banana out). This will probably still be too hot but you can more comfortably use the "line & playback" fader to attenuate it. The last problem will be to find a 7-pin male tuchel plug but you should find it in a good professionnal electronic shop or on the internet.

I strongly recommend that you record WAV-24 bits if you want to be faithfull to the original quality of the Nagra tapes (that's what I do when I want to re-use some of my old Nagra recordings)

Hope this helps...

JC

It is a balanced line... It has a ground, an S+ and an S-. Note: the +/- are conventions of indicating the pins, they do not necessarily indicate that one is positive and the other is negative. Rather, S- is an inverted signal compared to S+. So, ideally, if S+ has +1V impressed upon it, S- should be -1V. This means the difference between the two is +2V.

External noise (60 cycle hum, for instance) will be impressed on both leads in the same amount -- say the noise is -0.5V. That makes S+ +0.5, and S- -1.5 -- and the difference is still 2V, no noise seen.


The ideal means would be to use a 2-pole -> 3-pole matching transformer. The 2-pole input would be Signal and Ground of source instrument, the 3-pole output would be S+, ground, S- (and the two grounds may even be isolated from each other.

Simpler is what happens when you plug a TS connector into one of those XLR/TRS combo jacks -- the contacts for ring and sleeve (of a TRS) short together on the sleeve, leaving the tip for the only signal.

Thanks for your advice. I've started to look for a tuchel plug to make up a cable for the mixer output (no luck finding one yet). I've also downloaded a manual for the nagra. I'm also wondering whether I could use the headphone output from the front panel of the Nagra to go into the Zoom - is this a possibility?



Thanks, yes I'll record in 24bit. You mention that you record from your Nagra. Do you record to a Zoom?

Thanks,
Andy

Where have you been looking?

http://www.mouser.com/amphenol-tuchel/

Yes, it is. But the quality will probably not be as good as using the line outputs.

Sorry, no. I usually copy my Nagra tapes to an Aaton Cantar (http://www.aaton.com/products/sound/cantar/). But it's a little more expensive machine... I use the Zoom on set as an additional atmos recorder or, some times, as a main recorder using external microphones through a portable mixer (Cooper Sound CS104).

Regarding level settings, your father probably recorded level tones at the begining of his tapes. If you record 24 bits, I recommend that you set it to -24 dBFS on the Zoom. This may seem low, but you may be surprised by how much a Nagra tape can handle in terms of over-modulation (I have some examples of overloaded copies made with a -18dB setting).

JC

Well, I've finally got the archiving process off the ground - maybe not perfectly. Thanks for all the advice so far.

I borrowed a 20 dB and 30dB canon pads and this managed to bring the output of the Nagra down to managable levels for the Zoom.

The cable I then made up had two cores and a screen. I connected the nagra banana jacks to pins 2 and 3 on the canon plug. This was very noisy and was picking up local radio stations, so I also connected the screen to pin 1 on the canon plug and left it disconnected at the nagra end.

However I'm still finding that the output from the nagra has a 'buzz' if it is connected to its power supply or if I touch the nagra anywhere. So I'm making the recordings using batteries in the nagra and not touching it at all during recording. I'm sure this is not the perfect solution but it's the closest I've got so far.

Already found some interesting material including Paul Macartney recording blackbird at Abbey Road, discussion with Paul Macartney, Mary Hopkins in Pauls garden, James Taylor in Paul Macartneys house and 'test' audio tapes for use by cinemas to set up their audio for the playback of Clockwork Orange.