[mardigrasvet]

would it be possible that my laptop does not have the capability to have a line in? i found a schematic of the volume control and on the pic was listed "line in" with a vol control lever. my vol control lists vol control, wave, sw synth, cd player, and pc speaker. there is no "line in" option.

[vicks]

I believe your 'line in' is probably identified with a microphone icon.
vicks

[Rick_in_Fla]

I missed the the fact that it's a laptop. A laptop would only have a microphone jack and a headphone jack, there is no line in jack. At least that is how mine is. But you should be able to connect your cassette player to the microphone jack of the laptop and record from there.

[Ms. Mia]

...might make sure the internal microphone's "Mute" box isn't ticked (look in the "Advanced" area of Control Panel sound options). Many people leave theirs muted all the time when not in use, to avoid the horrible feedback that can occur otherwise. That's a different thing than muting the main external volume.

Hope the recordings don't need to be very good quality tho, since the laptop microphone jack can only give you mono recordings...

[mardigrasvet]

thanks for the tips. that last tip about the mono is a killer for me. i do have my old desktop. would that enable a much better quality?

[Ms. Mia]

Definitely (assuming the desktop has stereo line-in, which it probably does). It would be worth it for something like music where recording in stereo makes a big difference.

[mardigrasvet]

i tinkered with audacity and can record. the problem was the volume on my tape player and the volume on audacity. now my question is this: each side of the casette has 45minutes of music and i do not want to start and stop after each song to separate. (if they are not separated, the file will be very big.) i do not want to record all the tapes and then find out by simply clicking something in audacity it would have done this for me! thanks.

[vicks]

It has been some time since I did this (about 4-5 yrs) but as I remember, I used s splitter and used some head phones so I could monitor the sound coming from the player and I did pause the recording between each song to enable it easier to later burn to cds. It is a bit time consuming but worth it in the long run, At least it was to me.
vicks

[stantley]

Another thing you can do is record the whole side of a tape, cut and paste each track into separate audio tracks and then do a multiple track export.

[Ms. Mia]

Below is a link to one of the many tutorials available on how to best split recordings made from tapes (or vinyl, etc.) into multiple tracks. This way involves simply recording a whole side of the tape, then finding and inserting 'labels' at the start of each song, then exporting as multiples. I did it this way myself on many tapes several years ago, although I've forgotten the exact details by now (there are several 'label' functions in Audacity, that do different things).:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help...=files&i=split

[Bryan_Clark]

In that same menu "Sound and Audio Devices," on the "Volume" tab, click "Advanced." You should see a row of output options. Click on "Options" then "Properties". Select "Recording" then click OK. You should see a row of input options. Make sure "Line In" column has the "Select" box checked.

Then see if it worked!

I addressed a similar problem yesterday in my blog.

If you do not have a "Line In" then you may want to invest in a low cost USB Sound Card

[Ms. Mia]

He posted awhile ago that he already figured out what the issue was in his case. But anyway, on laptops that have line-in capabilities purposely disabled by the manufacturer at the *hardware level, there will be no "Line-in" box/option. Only "Microphone." That move was/is to appease RIAA concerns, of course.

*Some manufacturers were able to relent and issue updates to enable the feature; others had permanently neutered it at hardware level-- e.g. Lenovo. Not sure if that's always still done, there was a major outcry. For some models workarounds are possible, e.g. a new sound card (IF that possibility hasn't been thwarted at the BIOS level by the manufacturer! Lenovo likes to do that too, with various hardware types). Or an external soundcard. That's what I had to do for my Thinkpad.

[Bryan_Clark]

The other problem is that typically the microphone input is mono, while the "Line In" input is stereo. You simply can't plug a stereo input to a mono jack and expect it to work, and the other way around.

[Ms. Mia]

To help keep the thread concise, FYI that was also already discussed here.

[Bryan_Clark]

Then what was the point of:
"But anyway, on laptops that have line-in capabilities purposely disabled by the manufacturer at the *hardware level, there will be no "Line-in" box/option. Only "Microphone.""

If the ports are not physically the same in the first place, there's no real point to have it disabled? Just seems backwards to me.

I've never in my life, btw, seen a laptop with functionality disabled for outside source capturing, audio OR video. Doesn't mean they don't exist, just means I'm a skeptic.