Cassette to Audio card

[Joe's Dad]

I have been transferring songs from tape to CD for awhile, and i use any device that will play a tape and any computer. How? All you need is a 1/8inch cable that has two male ends on it. I have freeware called audacity, you can use audition, or sony soundforge as well. If anyone would like to know more about this just ask. The quality is Great and it's super easy to do. You can choose where you want to start and stop the recording, or record the entire tape and then insert track breaks here and there.

They used to make cassette tapes for Memorex at the old Indian School in front of WC's. Ask your Grandma, she'll tell you. LOL

[Toolbox]

True some are selectable mic or line level.

[Siouan Grass]

You will want to plug the audio cable into the "line in" jack on your audio card because the signal comming from your tape deck has already been pre-amplified and by plugging it into the mic jack you will just be re-pre-amplifying it which can cause distortion and clipping of the signal.

This is true but most laptops and desktops i have owned do not have a "line in jack specifically" If you own a computer that has only a mic jack, then windows will promt you to select wether you will be using this jack as a mic, or line in. Click "line in" and the jack labeled as "mic", will now serve as a line in.

[Toolbox]

You will want to plug the audio cable into the "line in" jack on your audio card because the signal comming from your tape deck has already been pre-amplified and by plugging it into the mic jack you will just be re-pre-amplifying it which can cause distortion and clipping of the signal.

[Siouan Grass]

One end of the cable inserts into the headphone jack on the player and the other into the mic input on the computer.

[wyo_rose]

That's cool. I'll have to check yard sales for cassette players cuz we don't have any laying around.

And the other end of the cable plugs into the Mike jack or the other IN?

[Siouan Grass]

I have been transferring songs from tape to CD for awhile, and i use any device that will play a tape and any computer. How? All you need is a 1/8inch cable that has two male ends on it. I have freeware called audacity, you can use audition, or sony soundforge as well. If anyone would like to know more about this just ask. The quality is Great and it's super easy to do. You can choose where you want to start and stop the recording, or record the entire tape and then insert track breaks here and there.

[wyo_rose]

They're actually someone else's tapes. And I'm making multiple copies.

[MCKiemle]

Thanks for answering my questions wyo_rose,I' might look into it.See,we have seen this thing that converts cassettes,and records[which my parents have several of!] into CDs,We have a record player,but it needs a needle...hard to find
At any rate the money thing,or rather the amounts required are a bit of a deterrent to getting one.
A thought though,why not just put your songs on another tape?
I have done that for my Mom,and we have some other tapes that are on their last leg.We just stop playing them,and hope they last till we get something figured out.
I suppose it helps to have a double tape player if you do that!sorry :P
Thanks for the help.

[wyo_rose]

It's a PlusDeck 2c cassette drive that installs in a slot on your computer, just like adding a second CD drive or whatever. I ordered it from an audio/visual catalog that I saw in our library, and it was about $149.

In another catalog I saw a stand alone machine that converts directly from your cassette to a CD. This would be much easier but it was like $500.00!!

This PlusDeck converts the cassette audio to .wav or .mpg3 files on your computer. It can also convert other analog files to digital .wav or .mpg.

I'm still working on getting these 4 cassettes I have converted over. Just when I think I have it figured out, something else comes up. On a lot of recorded tapes, it will recognize the breaks between songs and it can make different files. But with native music it was breaking up each song into tiny files. So I make each tape convert as one file.

But some of the cassettes are longer than the 80 minutes that will fit on a CD, so I'm going to have to re-record each side as a different file and put them on separate CDs.

While you're recording, you shouldn't do anything else on your computer that makes any sound or that will be recorded right along with the cassette. Ask me how I found that out...jks.

We had a power bump yesterday so I lost my audio settings...went back to not being able to hear anything. I found my microphone setting was defaulting to mute. DOH!!

Overall, it's going to be worth it in the end. Some of these tapes I'm working on are over 15 years old are won't last forever.

I can find out more ordering info if you'd like to check on getting one.

[MCKiemle]

What is this equipment called that can put your tapes on cd?I have certainly got some tapes that could go!
Thanks so much!!

[wyo_rose]

nevermind. It finally started working.

But I recorded in .wav and I can't do anything with it in Media Player. Tried to download a codec for that but no use.

So I rerecorded in .mp3 and it worked good.

But sorry, I can't transfer y'alls tapes to CD. Takes too long.

[wyo_rose]

Goal: transfer cassette tape music to CD

Product: PlusDeck 2c cassette drive that goes in a PC slot on computer

Problem: Can't get the analog audio through the SoundBlaster 04100 card.

Tried: Updating sound card driver

What works: Can hear the cassette audio through the cassette players own sound card analog port. Can hear the PC sound through the headphone jack of the cassette player. (the cassette player hooks to its own sound card, then has external cables connecting to the computer's sound card and to the serial port of the computer)

Anybody have any suggestions??