Converting Analog Tape Recordings to Digital

[jonuck]

Have a lot of old Cassette Tape recordings and before these are lost forever I would like to download these to my hard-drive and hence to CD as required.
Does anyone have experience of the procedure involved?. I have my stereo system interfaced to my sound-card and use it as my computer sound system but I am not sure of procedure to make this work in reverse or indeed if an analog tape can be made into a digital recording. Would welcome any advice on this subject.

Jonuck.

 

[Rusty1952]

From my experience all that is generally needed is a soundcard that has a recorder softwr (bundled in) so that u can convert the analog recordings to wav. files. You'll need the Y adapter that combines the analog composite outs of ur playback deck to a 1/8" stereo pin type connector to interface to the input of ur sound card. Once u recorder softwr records and converts the media to wav files then u can burn them to cd using ur cd burner softwr.

 

[alwrmc]

Am currently doing this myself. I went Radio Shack and bought a small component stereo casette player ($49). I had to do this because of the distance from my computer to my stereo system. I plug in the casette player with a cable, also from Radio Shack, that has two RCA type plugs on one end and a Mini Stereo plug on the other. The Mini plug goes into the line-in on my Audigy Gamer card. Make sure your line-in is adjusted in the volume control of the sound card. I am using Roxio Easy CD/DVD 6 as my software for the recording process. It copies to HD then I can manipulate the file/songs and burn to CD. You may prefer another software package for that process. It is fairly simple to do. The end results of course depend on the quality of the tapes you are recording from. Software packages have different levels of sound adjustment, so you have some help in removing tape hiss (and other noises) before burning to CD. Don't remove the HD file before you are satisfied with the CD sound. A friend did this a couple of years back and boosted the bass dramatically before burning the CD, then when he played it back in his car and cranked up the bass to maximum, it was totally a mess!!

 

[jonuck]

Many thanks you guys, I seem to have all the necessary equipment at hand my only doubt is the software to do the converting of the analog content to a wav file which as I understand it is what gets stored on the HD. The software I have at the moment is called "MP3 Workshop", it mentions all kind of options ref wav and mp3 format but no mention of analog. Maybe I am going to have to look into some alternative.

jonuck.

 

[2steps]

I have been doing this also and am using Total recorder. I bought a double jack lead and connected it to my stereo's headphone port and pc's line in socket. Then I press play on the stereo and record in total recorder. when it's finished it can be saved as a few different formats to play on the pc or burn to cd

 

[jonuck]

Many thanks 2steps, I will most certainly give this method a try and the beauty of it is I can try the software before I buy.


jonuck.

 

[2steps]

no problems. Have to say I liked that fact too. Good luck