How do I transfer audio tapes to my computer?

Question

I have just got myself an iPod shuffle, and have been transferring story CD's onto my computer to transfer to my iPod. I also have loads of tape cassettes which I would like to transfer as well. Can anyone tell me how I do this?

Answer 1

Hi!
There are 2 ways to convert your cassette to CD.

You can either buy a stand-alone audio CD recorder, from companies such as Sony or Teac. (Search on http://www.ebay.com/ )Connect you tape deck directly to the audio CD recorder, hit ‘Play’, and record directly onto blank CD’s .Some say they offer automatic track detection, which creates a new track on the CD each time it hears an interval of silence; in practice, this technology can be flaky. If you want the CD to recognize each song as a separate track, you’ll usually wind up baby-sitting the entire process and hitting a ‘New Track’ button at the end of each song.

(If you do decide to buy a separte recorder, here's an article on how to use a Teac. turnatable
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/technology/17pogue.html?ex=1313467200&en=c2750ad818bbd966&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)

If you have computer, you can connect your tape deck directly to it. The cable you need has stereo RCA jacks (round red and white) that plug into the tape deck’s stereo output, and a headphone style mini-plug for the audio input jack for your Mac or PC.

Next, equip your computer with some recording software. Free programs abound, like MusicMatch or Audacity .
Download Audacity from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/?lang=en

Visit your computer’s sound control panels or the options screen in you recoding software, to make sure that it is ‘listening’ to the correct audio input (and not, for example, it’s microphone jack). Once you’ve set the volume levels, press ‘Play’ on you tape deck and ‘Record’ in the recording software. If you save each song as separate file on your hard drive, you’ll be all set to turn them into traditional tracks on the finished CD. This entails stopping the tape after every song and exporting the file before continuing.

Once a song has safely arrived on your hard drive, you can export it – in AIFF or WAV format, for example – and then import it into a program like iTunes or Windows Media Player for burning to a blank CD.

If you want more step-by-step details on this process , browse through the following links. You may find them useful.

http://www.andybrain.com/archive/convert-cassette-to-cd-digital.htm
http://web.singnet.com.sg/~lion4/articles/diy/cassette.html
http://www.webtechgeek.com/How-to-Burn-Copy-a-Cassette-or-LP-to-CDR.htm
http://www.infopackets.com/channels/en/windows/gazette/2005/20050519_convert_mp3_audio_cd_to_cassette.htm

I hope that I have been helpful. Best of luck

Answer 2

There are two ways I can think of doing this. Option 1: Get a cassette recorder which records on full size cassettes and play the music on the PC over the speakers and let it record it that way. Option 2: Get a cassette Duplicator/copier and a cassette adapter plug the cassette adapter into your pc speaker port put the tape in the cassette to be copied slot. Put in a blank Tape. Play the music on the computer and hit copy. Good Luck HTH.

Answer 3

You need a cassette player and a lead to connect the headphone outlet on the player to your line in socket in the computer. You also need some software; I recommend Audacity from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. (it's FREE). Be sure to also download the Lame encoder you will need to convert to mp3. Play the tapes into the computer, recording them in Audacity, Clean up the recordings using the tools , and export as mp3. Done! NB there is a tape unit that will fit into a drive bay but rather expensive

Answer 4

You will need to connect your cassette player to your PC soundcard, then play the cassette whilst recording on your PC. A step-by-step guide is available at:
http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/diy
The recording software is the key, there are some free software downloads available at:
http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/downloads.php
I have used ‘Magix Audio Cleaning Lab’ and ‘Audacity’ – Audacity is particularly popular since it is free! (requires additional 'lame-enc.dll' file for MP3 conversion)
If you record to WAV format, expect file sizes of around 10MB per minute, or 1MB per minute for MP3 (at 128kbps).
Once you have your digital versions of the recording on your PC, simply burn them on to a CD (Nero burning software or similar..). If you use Magix Audio Cleaning, the software will burn an audio CD for you without needing additional software (assuming you have a CD writing drive of course!)
You can also download a free PDF version of the step-by–step guide from the download page mentioned above, the guide is complete with diagrams and screen-shots.
Hope this helps

Answer 5

I use a sound editor to put the tape into the computer and then turn the wav file into an MP3 for putting onto disc or into the Ipod.

Answer 6

Use nero 6.6
Connect an tape device or walkman to your pc in the line in of your sound card then start converting ..............

Answer 7

I like this gizmo:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/iMic/