Robtrapp

I would like to put some old audio tapes (interviews-music) onto CDs while the tape media is still viable.
I have integrated audio on a Dell Dimension 4400; what is a reasonable (not pricey) approach to doing this?

Fox

Here's a very inexpensive method to do what you are looking to do. It will require one or two small purchases, unless you already have them.

Depending on the make and model of your cassette player, you will need one or both of the following:

- (1) 1/8'' male to male cable, available form almost any audio or electronics supply store

- (1) 1/8'' to 1/4'' adapter, if your tape player's output is to a 1/4'' jack

Plug one end of the cable into your player and the other into the 'line in' of your computer. Set the volume level on the recorder to line level by pushing in the "monitor" button if that is available. Otherwise, just set the volume to one or two.

To record the audio properly on your PC, you'll need something a little more robust than windows sound recorder. I would recommend Audacity for that job. Make sure the recording device in that program is set to line in, and hit the record button in Audacity.

Once that is recording, turn your PC speakers down to a lower level as a precaution and press the play button on your tape player. You should now be getting some input into the program. Work the recording levels (the output levels of the tape player) around until you have a good level recording. Use an mp3 or other sound file as a comparison.

Audacity will let you export your file to WAV or OGG natively, and if you point it in the direction of the LAME (MP3 encoder) DLL file, it'll also encode to MP3.

Hope this helps!

Robtrapp

That seems easy enough. The missing piece was Audacity. I should be off and recording shortly.
Thanks

TheMatt

I use this exact same method to record from my stereo. Works great.

Volt-Schwibe

me too.

only difference is, i use voyetra's windat.

and that's only because i happen to own a copy.

otherwise i'd use audacity like all my friends do.