I was looking at the new Vermont Country Store catalog (go ahead and laugh, where else can you still get Tangee lipstick?) and saw a $40 Walkman “style” converter for turning cassette tapes into MP3 or WAV via one’s computer and then, one hopes, onto my iPod. So even the grandma crowd is doing it!
Questions:
Is this a $40 piece of useless crap?
Obviously the songs/albums would be untitled when they come off my cassette tapes into my computer. Is there a way to categorize them by album and title each album and song when I put them into my iPod, or will I have a long, long list of “untitleds” crowding up my menu?
How does one stop and start when converting cassette selections into MP3 or WAV files (and which of those two do I choose?). On each cassette tape, I would only want to convert maybe half of what’s on there.
Thanks–and don’t forget when answering, I am a total idiot, and *500 years old. *
Not really, it’s actually kind of handy if you don’t have any other equipment available. If you wanted to do without it, you’d need would be a cassette player with a headphone jack, a male/male audio cable, and a program on your computer to record off the soundboard. It can be a bit of a production, so I’d say that for $40 this is a decent enough deal.
You’ll have to add them to your iTunes library and edit the information manually, unfortunately.
That’s another manual deal - you’ll have to deal with that on your own. I don’t know how the device works so it might auto-detect silence and break those into separate files (which could be buggy on its own) but even if it does this, you’ll have to weed out the stuff you don’t want. Depending on the number of cassettes you want to convert, this could be a long process. Think of it almost like dubbing cassettes way back in the day - you have to choose what to record, start and stop it yourself, and it will take a while to get the music off of the cassettes.
Oh, and you’ll want to choose MP3 in this case. WAV files are uncompressed and take up a LOT of space comparatively for not a lot of audio quality difference unless you’re an audiophile. I find most people don’t know the difference.
Know that the sound quality will not be up to modern standards and vary wildly depending on the age and wear of the cassettes. That said, you don’t need a specialized device to accomplish this, you need only a computer with a sound card (they pretty much all come with one these days) and a line-in jack. Connect any cassette player with a line-out jack to your computer and the rest can all be done with software like Jukebox, Audacity, or Garageband.
Once the files are on your computer you import them into iTunes or whatever your music management program may be, and add the pertinent information there.
You have two options: record an entire side of the cassette at once and then separate it into individual songs later, or manually stop/start the cassette player and recording software for each song. This may not be automated at all; you will have to start both devices playing/recording, sit and listen to the entire song, then stop both of them. Personally I would just do it all at once then separate the songs since some editing is likely going to be necessary anyway to delete empty spaces and whatnot.
these automatic devices might have some good points and do have some bad points.
if you have no other equipment and use them as intended then they might be good.
if you have a tape deck (tape player for use in a stereo system) and a sound card in your computer that has a line level input then you need no other hardware then a cable (common at stores though one you may not have on hand) to connect the two devices.
depending on your computer and its operating system (Windows?) there are various free and cheap software programs to record sound for purposes like this.
after recording the songs you can both name the resulting mp3 files that would be useful to you and the mp3 player (artist, album and song).
what is the make and model of the converter?
in using these automatic LP or cassette to computer converters it might identify any 2 second pause as the end of a song. this will give poor results for things that are a full album side with quiet parts like classical or some rock albums.
if you want to pick just a few songs per tape then it might be easier to do this is a more manual fashion.
Hmmm. Well, this sounds like a doable project. I figured I would have to record them in “real time,” and retitle them within iTunes–though how to get each song *within *the proper “album” on my iPod is confusing.
I have an old kerosene-powered Toshiba Satellite laptop; no tape deck, just a tiny portable cassette player (oddly, I have found that Radio Shack makes the bets ones).
You can edit each track’s “album” name field (and track number, album cover artwork, etc) in iTunes…when you sync, all the tracks whose album fields match should automatically be grouped together on your iPod.
Oooh–thanks. The trick is being clever enough to figure out how to *do *that, which may take some trial and error.
Omar, a lot of the stuff has never been released elsewhere: much of it recorded from my old 78s. Stuff that’s never even made it onto YouTube, let alone Archeophone-type re-releases.
with 78 era sound, especially recorded to cassette yourself, will have noise and it just doesn’t sound right without it.
depending on the device and its included software if you recorded as a WAV then you might be able to remove whatever amount of noise you want before making it into a MP3. it would take some playing with to see what you can do and what suits you. you never can remove lots of the noise but you might remove some.
Not everyone uses iTunes. There are zillions of alternatives. [You couldn’t pay me to use iTunes, for example.]
I’d recommend just using Windows Explorer to rename the files with the convention you prefer (I prefer “artist - track# - song title.mp3” myself) and then use a program like Dr. Tag to generate the ID3 tags (that’s the info that your ipod reads to tell you what song you’re listening to, etc.).
Select track(s), Ctrl-i on Windows, Command-i on Mac.
Note that “Album”= what the album name will appear as in your library, while
“Sort Album”= the album name iTunes will alphabetize your albums by. They don’t necessarily have to be the same (but it helps if they are). Same goes for “Artist,” “Album Artist,” and “Sort Artist.”
As long as one or both of them are consistent for all the tracks you want to group together under the same album name they will get grouped together, provided the Artist names match up as well. Yes, it’s way more complicated than it needs to be, but that’s just how it is with iTunes.
I have this, which I’m using to convert my old 45 collection. It comes with all the necessary software and has proven very easy to use.
Yeah, you have to record in real time and manually name the files, but I make an afternoon of it now and then and it’s actually kind of fun. And the resulting files sound surprisingly good!
I use something similar (it is actually to be used to record protected analog VHS tapes to digital DVDs/etc, but works with simple audio as well), but as others have said a simple cable and the proper software is all that is needed.
without a stereo tape deck and a computer without line level audio input (such as many laptops) then a converter device that uses a USB port would be easiest.
I hooked up my cassette deck with the computer using a USB connector and found that the sound level was quite low (cranking it up high enough resulted in unacceptable hiss). So I found an adaptor device for ?$30-40 or so which boosted the audio level and resulted in good quality sound, at least to my creaking and defective ears. I’ve converted a boatload of cassette tapes using this and Audacity software, with very good results. I just label the songs I want and delete the rest on Audacity before importing them into Itunes. (Audacity has noise reduction capacity which I mostly don’t use except for worn LPs).
I’ve found lots of cassettes for sale at used book and music stores. Apparently few people are interested in buying them but good stuff is still out there in this format.
I’ll post the name of my adapter later when I get home.
Here’s what I use to get good quality cassette output into the computer (for recording digitally onto Audacity software). Easy to use and good results.
Use a program like Audacity.exe to record and edit audio files, using the microphone in line. Record as WAV. then save while converting to MP3.
Yes, with iTunes, once you have created and imported MP3 - highlight/select all tracks together and edit the info to set album, Artist, and other common details. The set the track names and numbers (for 78??) one by one.