How can I inexpensively copy my cassettes to CD?

Question

I have a bunch of old cassettes that are on their last leg and I really would like to burn them to CD, but I do not want to pay to have it done. I have a good computer, I think I should be able to use it for that. Thanks for any suggestions.

Answer 1

Use a stereo patch cord (male both ends) to pipe your music from a decent player (via the headphone jack) to the 'audio in' jack of your computer.

Then it gets fun. Windows has the software to do the basics, but you may want to search for some demo software to make it easier. You'll find programs for cheap or in demo mode that let you burn the entire tape, then divide it to tracks and label the tracks, and do some equalization and cleaning at the same time.

Any of a dozen programs, including those built in Windows, can burn the new tracks onto a CD(R) disk. I like the free MusicMatch Jukebox personally for this.

Answer 2

This is from www.fleximusic.com/support/cd01.htm:

How to turn Vinyl LPs into CD? How to record from a cassette to PC and then to a CD-R, to be played on home audio system?

Vinyl LPs or Cassette to PC
1. Run the FlexiMusic Wave Editor, Under the File menu, choose New.

2. Choose the format as 44100Hz, 16 bits, Stereo.

3. Connect the "Audio-Out" of your turn table/cassette player to "Audio-In" of the sound card (behind the PC) using a stereo audio cable.

4. Click the Record button (the red circle) on the tool button. This will open the Record window.

5. Click "Recording Source" button to select the recording properties in the dialog box. Select the Line-In, adjust the recording volume for the highest possible performance.

6. Now start the playback of the Turn Table/Cassette Player and click the "Start" button in Record Audio window of FlexiMusic Wave Editor. If necessary, Adjust the volume setting by seeing the levels of the volume going up an down on the volume level indicator.

7. You can pause the process of recording by clicking the "Pause" button any time you want and then resume it by clicking the "Continue" button.

8. When you want to stop recording, just click "Stop" button, Click "Done" button to finish recording and the destination sound file is there.

9. To save your recording, click the File menu and choose Save command. Save your recorded file to an easy to remember folder on your computer.

Burn to CD

To convert to CD-R from the cassette you need to save in format 44100hz 16 Bit stereo wave file for copying into CD (that you have already set in the above Step 2). You should use CD-R type CDs for recording (don't use CD-RW type). Use the free software that came with CD writer hardware to write to CD. When you buy the CD writer there will be free software together with that, It is best to use the software supplied by the manufacturer of CD writer to write a CD.

Answer 3

You will need:
* - A DVD-RW or CD-RW drive.
* - A sound card with good quality (at least 48kHz sampling rate) stereo Line-In support. Most Creative cards have this ability.
* - A cassette player with Line Out support or a headphones jack.
* - CD burning software (This software may have come with your drive. Nero is the most comprehensive software for burning.).
* - Software that records from Line-In in sufficiently high quality and software to clean up the audio (remove background hiss, for example). There is free software to do this, but the rather expensive Adobe Audition 2.0 is the best I have used. If you want to do it for free, Audacity ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ) is very good and can also be used to burn your CDs, so you won't need separate burning software.
* - A 1/8" Male-Male stereo patch cable. Either your stereo or sound card may need 1/4" connectors. Check Radio Shack for 1/8"-1/4" adapters if this is the case.

1. Connect your cassette player's Line-Out to your sound card's Line-In using the stereo patch cable. If your cassette player only has headphones, raise up the cassette player's volume to almost its highest setting. Go into your audio card's software settings and make sure Line-In is not muted and is properly adjusted in terms of volume or boost. Play a few songs to get this right. Make sure you get loud, but clear audio. Some hiss may be present from the cassette technology.
2. Start up your recording software. Set it up to record at 48kHz or higher at 24-bit or better quality. CDs do not support such high quality, but you will need this quality to edit the files properly. Start recording in the software before you press play on the tape deck; you can always trim out the silence later. Record one song at a time. When you're done recording the first song, watch the waveform and make sure that it has not been hard limited (that it does not go above 0dB). This will degrade the quality of that particular sound, so it is actually a good idea to play the song all the way through first and look at the intensity/amplitude bars to make sure the Line-In volume is not set too high. If you don't have these dynamic bars in your software, you'll have to record it and look at the waveform and adjust the Line-In volume for each song. Save each song as a separate uncompressed (PCM) WAV or losslessly compressed FLAC file, depending on the codecs your software supports. After you have saved it, use the audio editing tools to remove any hiss, crackles or pops, if present. Then trim out silence from the beginning/end of the track. Read Audacity or Audition's help files on how to do these processes properly.
3. Audio CDs have a special format, so you need software to burn them properly (you can't just burn the WAVs onto the CD and play it in any CD player). Most CD burning software support only WAVs or MP3s. Since you lose quality by compressing to MP3, make sure you use uncompressed (PCM) WAVs for your audio that you're going to burn to CD (You can use FLAC or other lossless compression formats to archive your audio).

Answer 4

I'm using INport USB Analog to Digital Converter (www.xitel.com) and am pretty happy with the product. A line goes from your stereo headphone outlet to your PCs USB port. You have to actually play the cassette at normal speed to make the digital recording, and to stop the software manually when the side finishes playing. Then you can either simply save it as "Cassette #22 Side B" or you can analyze it, split it into individual tracks, and type in a name for each track.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

MOST computers have an input for audio to record. Just record them onto your computer and then burn a CD. There are free programs available on the web to do most of this.

Answer 7

Try iMic. You hook up the cassette player and copy to your computer. Then you can burn your CDs.

Answer 8

if u want to copy audio cd, just take a head phone wire from ur walk man, and put cable in sound card line in, then use any recording software, in window it is sound recorder or use nero and then write a cd, if u r using video, then use video capture card

regards,
vikas kumar
[e-mail]

Answer 9

I am not sure but if you figure it out will you pass the infomation along to me because I would love to be able to do that!

Answer 10

You need to buy a captureed device like mp10 and you can do with yourself.