When my kids were little, I made an audio tape of them singing and talking. Tapes seem to get torn up very easily and I don’t want that to happen to this one.
I know that with the right equipment you can somehow get videotapes on to your computer.
Can I get an audiotape on my computer ?
How ?
What do I need ?
Thanks.
You will need two things. Appropriate hardware to connect your audio tape to your computer and software to extract the sound to a suitable format.
Your computer needs to have a line-in or microphone socket. Most machines have this now and it will normally be located along side your headphones socket. You need a machine to play your tape on that has a headphone socket and a cable to run between the two (anyone with a decent amount of audio equipment will most likely have one of these so ask your friends!)
You probably want to store the msuic as wav or maybe mp3 (just cause these are popular formats).
There are a number of free utilities for recording analogue input to these formats some of which are located here.
Hopefully someone will be along to recommend a good one in a minute.
fezpp is right but I’ll still add two cents.
The line in jack (if you have one) is preferable to the microphone jack. Whichever jack you use, the jack on your computer will be what is called a 1/4" jack or mini jack. Your tape player may have a line out jack, or you may need to use the speaker jacks, but either way, you have to look at the physical connections and then head down to Radio Shack and get a cable (and possibly adaptors as well) to make the physical connection between the two. They have adaptors that will go from two speaker jacks to one jack and then from RCA jacks to mini jacks if you need to do that as well (very likely). Getting the physical setup to work will be the biggest challenge, but all the bits and pieces you will need do exist, you just have to find them.
Once you have made the physical connection, then all you need is some decent recording software. This does not mean using the built-in Sound Recorder in Windows. I recommend a nice little free program called Audacity. You can find it here.
You may need to double click on the speaker icon in your system tray to enable the line in or microphone inputs and/or to adjust the sliders if the sound is distorting (a common problem when using the microphone jack as a line in jack).
Good luck and have fun!
Correction, phase 2. The jacks on computer sound cards are 1/8" minis. 1/4" is the size of Real Headphone jacks.
Definitely use the line-in on the sound card. A standard tape deck will have RCA jacks. So all you need is a cable with 1/8" stereo mini plug on one end and split RCA plugs on the other. I have at least 6 such cables lying around the house. They aren’t that hard to find.
If you are using something like a portable tape player as source, then you should hope it has a headphone jack. Then you will need a 1/8" stereo mini plug to (suitable size) stereo plug cable.
Pay attention to size, gender, and mono vs. stereo.
BTW, the tape hiss will be quite noticable. Programs like Audacity can be used to reduce that.