Cassette tapes may not have the high quality sound that you’re accustomed to with CDs and other digital formats, but analog does have its virtues.
Witness the resurgence of LPs, which have a warmer sound than digital tracks, and often reveal a different, more subtle side of the music. Since many cassettes were recorded from LPs, some of that magic has been preserved on tape. Cassettes were the format of choice for us kids who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, so there are still plenty of them floating around in attics, basements and thrift shops.
If you want to preserve music that’s on cassette, transferring them to a digital format is the way to go.
Ingredients
One cassette player – any kind will do, from an old Walkman to a cassette deck
One computer with a sound card and input jack
One male-to-male 1/8-inch mini-jack cord (or an RCA-to-mini-jack cord)
One digital audio recording program
Software
There are a variety of audio recording and editing programs you could use – some free, some not – but for the purposes of this exercise, let’s assume you’re using Audacity, one of the most popular freeware recording programs available on the web.
Audacity is an open-source audio recording and editing program that works on both Macs and PCs, and creates raw WAV files that you can edit and mix to your heart’s delight. You can also use it for burning CDs and creating podcasts or soundtracks. If you want to convert your WAV files to MP3s, you’ll need the LAME MP3 encoder, a separate plug-in that works with Audacity.
Recording Steps
Regardless of which audio recording software you’re using, these steps should work pretty well (there are minor differences in menus and terminology from program to program):
Hook your tape player up to the computer using a mini-jack cord. There should be a headphone or line-out jack on the cassette deck, and a line-in input on your computer’s sound card.
Go into the Control Panel and make sure the Line In Source is checked. In Windows, the menu path is Control Panel/Multimedia/Multimedia Properties/Devices. You should also check the input panel in your audio software. In Audacity, it’s the I/O tab in the Preferences dialog box. Also make sure the output is set to go through your sound card.
Check the recording settings in your software program. If you are recording music, check the Record in Stereo box (for voice recordings, that’s not necessary). Under the Quality tab you need to set the sample rate – the higher, the better. For CD quality, use 44,100 Hz.
Now that your settings are dialed in, press play on your cassette deck, and press the record button in your software program. Audio should be coming from your PC speakers, if you have them connected. Now click the input level meter and enable Start Monitoring to see a recording meter. Adjust the volume to your liking, and then restart the recording.
When you stop the recording, go to the file menu and save the file to your hard drive. From here you can edit and convert the file to MP3.
WAV to MP3
In order to turn a WAV file to MP3, you need MP3 encoder software, such as LAME. Before doing that, however, you may want to split up the tracks in your recording. In your audio editing software, there will be instructions on how to do this – basically, you look for the flatline (silence) in the sound waves between tracks and manually split it there. Select the flat areas with the mouse, and select “Cut” from the “Edit” menu to remove them.
Once you have MP3 files saved, you can use a MP3 tagger program to apply tags that will be read by whatever MP3 player you play the tracks on.
In the Future
There are already cassette and record players that you can buy with USB outputs, which can be used to record audio directly to your computer without the need for a sound card. Next you will see cassette and record players with built-in hard drives, eliminating the middleman.
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