How do I convert tapes into sound files?

Question

I want to convert a 30 mns tape into an .mp3 or .wav, how do I do it?

Answer 1

You can find a place to do the conversion for you, and pay them, or you can go to a computer/electronics store and buy a converter package. What this is, is a USB plugin on one side and a audio plugin on the other and some software that will read and store the data from the device in a disk file. You start the software, set it up, press record, and then play the music, from anything that can plug into it, CD player, tape player, radio, etc, and then when it is done you can clean up the file and maybe have to convert it to an MP3. They cost $50 or so, sometimes less because there are lots of these things on the market now.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

You would need the following:

1] Connections to play the tape into your sound card (usually RCA cables to a mini-plug).
2] Some type of software to actually record the signal from your tape playback. Try using Easy CD Creator or Nero. Then record the sound on to your computer, and then make a CD from Nero or Easy CD-Creator. These programs have settings to make automatic recognition of tracks.
You can also use Easdy CD-Creator to 'clean-up' your recorder track before it is put onto a cd.
Note that these programs record in WAV file format. So think about the size of your hard drive you will use up.
1 minute of sound in a WAV file will take up approximately 10 megabytes of disk space. So a 30 minute tape will end up using 300 megabytes.
You can use Nero or the CD Creator to convert the WAV files to MP3 format (which are much smaller files) and then erase the WAV files after you are done. The MP3 files are what you put on the CD.
Good luck.

Answer 3

You need a cable to go from your tape player (head-phone jack or line-out) to the line-in jack on your computer's sound card. You also need some software like Audacity, Polderbits, Roxio, etc. [Audacity is open source (ie. $0) software that you can get at www.sourceforge.net.] You then set the record level on the software, and play the tape. When it's over you can save the file in either MP3 or WAV.

Answer 4

You have to connect the tape player to your pc via player audio output going to the computer audio input. You can then use a software like the Adobe Audition to record while playing your tape then saving it either as a .wav or an mp3 file. Hope this helps