Nov 08 2008
Convert Cassette Tapes To CD And MP3 Formats
What You Need:
Asio4All Plugin: Audio Stream Input/Output is a computer sound card driver for recording professional quality audio on your computer. No hissing and click sounds are produces because the sound from what ever you plug in goes to the sound card directly. Windows does not process the sound back and forth to different components. Read more about this fantastic ASIO plugin here.
Audacity: Is the best free audio capturing and editing software
Tape PLayer: with head phone jack or RCA output jacks
Cable: To plug tape player to computer
or 
3.5 male to 3.5 male stereo connector or auxiliary input cable (RCA)
Mini twin jack (if using Acc cable)
Connect Tape Player To PC
First I installed the Asio4All plugin. It works on all sound cards and what it does is send the audio directly to the sound card without processing it back and forth in your pc. The audio recorded is the same quality as the tape.
I have a cheap tape player with only a head phone jack. I connected the black 3.5 male to male cable in the tapes headphone jack. I connected the other end in my PC’s line in jack. Please note that if you use the mic jack it will sound horrible and could cause damage to your sound card.
The process is the same for those using RCA cables except they need to use a twin type jack in the line-in of your computer for obvious reasons (two plug, one hole).
Audacity Set Up
- In the top menu of Audacity click “Edit” and scroll down to “Preferences”.
- In Playback devices make sure not to select “Microsoft SoundMapper” select “Real Tech something…”
Recording Digital Audio
Test the sound first. Press play on the tape player and the sound should come out of your PC’s speakers crystal clear. When you are ready to record click the red “record” button.
When you have tapped what you want click “stop”, the yellow square. Click “File” and “Export as Wav”.
Exporting As MP3
If you plan on burning your file to a cd as mp3 for playback on all your cd players read the following carefully to avoid head aches. Audacity in its self does not export as mp3’s. Do do so you need to download LAME MP3 Encoder.
Unzip LAME and save the file “lame_enc.dll” where you will (I put it in the c/prgram files/audacity folder). When you launch Audacity and use the “Export as MP3″ command for the first time, Audacity will ask you where the lame_enc.dll is saved. Then you are all set to export as mp3’s ready to be burned.
Burn your files to cd and you have a cd that can playback MP3 compatible player only.
Please note if you want to be able to play the cd any where including your car export as a wav file or a ogg vorbis and burn it using “audio CD” in Nero. I like Ogg Vorbis because it makes nice small files.
You can use the same techniques for vinyls, 8–tracks. You simply need to have the matching cable for your music players. Voila!
