I have several audio cassette tapes that are very important to me (live recorded stuff). Does anyone know the best and cheapest way to transfer this format to digital?
I guess I could record them as wave files into a program like cubase, and then burn a cd.
But is there an easier way?
Also, what is a (cheap) decent tape output source for this kind of job?
Well, you could get a [audio cassette drive for your PC* and rip straight from the cassettes…
but the cheapest way would be to plug any tape player into the “line in” connector on your computer (on PCs it’s usually on the sound card), press play on the tape player, record on the sound software on the computer, and record .wav files. Then most CD-burining programs will convert those to an audio CD.
What sound software, you ask? I use [url=“http://audacity.sourceforge.net/”]Audacity](http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/7a8d/). It’s free to download, you can get it for Windows, Mac and Linux, and it records to nice high-quality .wav files and lets you edit the results.
The best way would be to take it into a studio and have them convert it and scrub the noise from it.
Cubase on your computer would work as well.
I took some really old tapes, played them back into a higher end sound card, recorded the music in Sound Forge, lightly scrubbed the noise off with a SF plug-in, and burned them to a CD. Not great, but they sound better than the tapes.
If I REALLY wanted to spend the time I’d pull the tracks through a MOTU unit I have and spend more time with the clean up, EQ, stereo spreads, etc. But it wasn’t a paying gig (some of my personal stuff) so I didn’t bother.
Oh dear Og, I totally screwed that one up. Here it is again.
Well, you could get a audio cassette drive for your PC and rip straight from the cassettes…
but the cheapest way would be to plug any tape player into the “line in” connector on your computer (on PCs it’s usually on the sound card), press play on the tape player, record on the sound software on the computer, and record .wav files. Then most CD-burining programs will convert those to an audio CD.
What sound software, you ask? I use Audacity. It’s free to download, you can get it for Windows, Mac and Linux, and it records to nice high-quality .wav files and lets you edit the results.
What tape player? Any walkman or component tape player with a headphone out or line out connector.
You need to get a patch cord that has the appropriate conenctors. Sound cards on PCs usually have a stereo minijack in. Most portable tape players have stereo minijacks out; home-stereo-style component tape players often have RCA jacks out. Cables between these are easily obtained and inexpensive at stereo stores, Radio Shack, even larger hardware stores and places like Wal-Mart.
Cool. Thanx so much for your advice.