CASSETTES TO CD

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emkay007

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#10541 28-Nov-2006 06:43

Can anyone tell me how to copy audio music (anolog) form cassette tapes to CDs. I have a good collection of old songs on cassettes but I am not able to find a way to load them onto my IPod withoout burning them on CDs.
It will be a great help to me
Thanks

tonyhughes

Hawkes Bay
8476 posts

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Retired Mod

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#53918 28-Nov-2006 07:43

Use a cassette player with a line out jack, and plug that into line in, or mic jack on your sound card.

Now you are just a software package away... Should be plenty o freeware to record from an audio analog source and convert to mp3.

Quality will be shocking, might want to investigate buying the music online, already in mp3.

lurker

831 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#53924 28-Nov-2006 08:05

I agree obtaining the music online would be the way to go. But if you are going for the DIY approach then the software combination I'd recommend would be Audacity & Lame. I've used it myself a few times to convert old reel to reel tape recordings into MP3s.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=290

Rickles

2937 posts

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#53927 28-Nov-2006 08:32

Emkay,

Just to add to what others have said, I have recently transfered about 50 audio tapes to cd .... I'm currently ploughing my way through my record collection.

I used the tape cassette player from a stereo system simply connecting the output leads to the input of my computer's sound card ... you may need a Y (or two-into-one) cable with RCA plugs depending on output/input sockets available. My unit also had a built in amplifier but some stand alone cassette players will need a pre-amp between it and the PC ... more cables I'm afraid <s>. If you already have a casette player/stereo set up, try that first as it will probably give you pretty good results anyway.

The software I use to capture the music onto the computer's hard drive is Audio Rack (came with my sound card), but as has been poited out there are heaps of free (Shareware) recording programs out there in cyberland. Using the software is at first trial and error so that your recorded sound is not distorted, and essentially just monitoring the input line "level" ... do some test recordings, burn cd's and play back on a CD player for judging this .... for myself I have all input lines at full, any Dolby off, and the equaliser set to "flat" ... in other words I let the CD player I subsequently use to reproduce the oriiignal tape 'sound' ... modern amps/CDplayer systems have many settings to reproduce what Dolby would do in the early days of tape and give you a pretty good sound.

The process, once you have your recording levels ok to your taste, is to simply start the tape running, push the Start/Record button of the software and wait until the tape has run through ... since I play my resultant CD's straight through I don't split the tracks, but you may want to do this thus requiring you to stop the recording after each track. There are software packages that will split out the tracks at a later stage but I've found them largely fussy and time consuming frankly.

The recording is most likely to be in the WAV format, which you can then burn direct to CD, or convert the file/s to either MP3 or WMA first ... your iPod will play either of these two latter formats. The ubiquitous Nero burning program will do the AudioCD disk burns, and has an add-on MP3 converter, whilst there are plenty of free WMA/WAV-to-MP3 converters available too.

emkay007

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#54047 28-Nov-2006 20:45

Thanks guys for your prompt replies suggesting ways
I will try them out and give feedback about the success
Much appreciate your help

sat

142 posts

Master Geek

#54067 28-Nov-2006 22:34

tonyhughes: Use a cassette player with a line out jack, and plug that into line in, or mic jack on your sound card.

Now you are just a software package away... Should be plenty o freeware to record from an audio analog source and convert to mp3.

Quality will be shocking, might want to investigate buying the music online, already in mp3.

do people buy music online?

lchiu7

6476 posts

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#54126 29-Nov-2006 10:08

A couple of points.

I have purchased about 2 CD's worth online. One song from iTunes (the US store) and about 2CD's from Sony Connect's Store. iTunes came down in it's MP4 format which I was able to move to another device using the well known procedure which alas, is not broken with the latest iTunes release. Sony's songs came in ATRAC format which were destined for a Sony HD Walkman and I put them there but was able to turn them into more transportable formats (read no DRM!)

But most of the music I have on my portable devices are just tunes from my CD collection which I am rediscovering given how easy it is to carry 3000+ songs around

As for recording from tapes to CD. I would agree with most of what has been said except if the original tapes were recorded with Dolby B or C I would leave the Dolby NR on on the recorder when capturing. Dolby is a complementary compander/expander noise reduction system (dynamic) and I would imagine it would be hard to reproduce the companding process in software - so tapes recorded in B or C would sound a bit treble hot without NR being applied to them

Also Audacity I recall (also Nero Wave?) have hiss reduction features which might be useful for noisy tapes.

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