Analog Cassete input to PC--Save as Digital??

Wally Giffin · From: Tacoma, Wa USA

I have several songs of a deceased wife on cassete, reel to reel tape and even 45rm records I wish to input as analog, change to digital and make a CD of.
Which program(s) would be best to use for this. I do have USB inputs plus the normal audio inputs for my sound card.

Thanks,
Wally Giffin

Tony Prior · From: Charlotte NC

Hi Wally, great plan. Yes , if you can record anything onto your PC it would be as a Wave file or an MP3. Doesn't much matter what the source is. From there you can burn to a CD from either the Wave or the MP3 format.

Does your PC have some sort of an audio (stereo) recorder ?

t

Scott Hiestand · From: MA, U.S.A

Wally

I use a product called Blaze Audio to create .WAV's from an external analog source. It's downloadable (free 30 day trial) for about $20.00 - $30.00. You can download Audacity for free and that does essentially the same thing.

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

The free Audacity program will "record" to the hard drive (save files as wav files). After you get them on the hard drive you can then make an audio CD.

This comes up frequently on the forum, but there's no FAQ on recording.

This write up I did several years ago. Along with a recording program such as Audacity this may help.
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Delvin Morgan · From: Lindstrom, Minnesota, USA

I record cassette tape on to my Boss Micro BR. Then I can load it to the puter if need be. Works great.

Wally Giffin · From: Tacoma, Wa USA

Thanks everyone,
I have an HP Media P-4 2.8 Meg
2 Meg of Ram
300 gig hard drive
NVIDEA G Force 6200 SE Graphics card and their standard Audio card.
I also have another computer that is faster with approx the same ram, hard drive, etc, but does have an Sound Blaster Audigy 2.25 Platinum sound card in it.
I have an old file that says Nero 6 will do the job along with two other programs that are no longer available. And not today, I see that Real Player Plus has the capability.
I guess what I really need is which software program is best for the recording and possibly cleaning the track up.
I also have an older version of Cakewalk w Sonar, Magic and Power Tracks Pro Audio 5 and a older version Cu Base.
Lots of toys that I have not really become familiar with.
I will look into the programs already mentioned in this thread.
Although I have been working with computers since the VIC 20, I have done very little recording. Most of the programs have an extensive learning curve to them, so am looking for recording for Dummies type of stuff.

Ken Lang · From: Simi Valley, Ca

Go here.

http://www.roemersoftware.com/index.html
Download EZ hiQ recorder. It's free.

You can record files in MP3, Wma, OGG or wave. You can set input levels. You can even set times and dates if you want to automatically record something.
It is a great tool
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Don McGregor · From: Memphis, Tennessee

First off, I don't recommend playing the tapes any more until you are actually ready to transfer them. Every time you play an acetate tape, you lose a tiny amount of sound quality. Not much, it is true, but some. Also, it would be sad if your playback machine chose one of these just listening times to eat an irreplaceable tape. It happens.
Clean your cassette player's playback heads well, and test the sound with some store bought music tapes to be sure you are getting the best sound quality all the way through to your monitor speakers.
I do a lot of digital transfer for clients from various reel-to-reel formats, cassette, adat, dat, vinyl, and even 78rpm records, and have had my best luck with Sound Forge and its plug-ins.

A couple of years ago, some friends and I tracked down copies (some in very poor condition, with lot's of pops, clicks, and hiss)of all of Memphis, TN's Central High School Band on 33-1/3 vinyl recorded 1962 to 1972. Some of the earliest and worst condition copies were nearly unplayable, and after recording them from a Thorens turntable with Soundforge to wav form on my PC, and then using the added audio cleaning plug-ins, the difference was uncanny. We presented a boxed set of Central CDs to the band director during those years, who, incidentally, had done all the original recordings on 1/2" Ampex machines and tape, and he pronounced the sound quality as being as good as the original.
Well, I have heard the original vinyl in mint condition played back on a good vintage tube stereo, and that's not really true, but the finished CDs are really, really good.
A good audio cleaning software will give you some control over how much cleaning you do to a particular track. If you let it go too far, you will begin to hear strange artifacts emerging in the playback.
Once done, make several back up copies, and put them in a safe place. With one-of-a-kind recordings, I make sure someone else has a copy in case something unforeseen happens to mine.
There are numerous brands of software out there, and any of them will work. I've just been personally impressed with Soundforge. I've also had a lot of coffee this morning, and now have to go listen to a couple of hours of a bad, late sixties, garage band while I transfer their unique sound from hissing reel-to-reel, to CD. Rambling on like this has at least delayed that joyous experience for nearly half and hour.
Thank you, and Good Luck,
-Don-

Alan Brookes · From: Brummy living in Southern California

I went about it a little differently. I have a lot of session tapes from the 60s and 70s on reel-to-reel, together with a bunch of cassettes recorded "in the field". I bought a Philips CD Recorder, which is like a cassette player but burns onto CDs rather than cassettes. (It works without a computer.) Then I backed up all my recordings onto CD.

As an afterthought I copied all those CDs onto my computer, so that I could circulate songs on .mp3 or .wmp whenever needed, and I backed up the computer hard disk onto a removable hard disk in case I had a hard disk crash. I also copied the CDs onto DVDs and sent copies to my closest friends, so that there would always be a copy of the recordings no matter what happened.

John Gould · From: Houston, TX Now in Cleveland TX

Alesis has a new product out just for transfer of cassette tapes to your computer. Built in usb port and it comes with software for your computer to make it easy to transfer. Also it is a dual well deck for making copies of your tapes.

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Don McGregor · From: Memphis, Tennessee

Jack,
If I had just bothered to click on, and read your tutorial first, I could have saved the time I spent trying to explain it myself.
I also wish I had seen and read your tutorial before I spent a whole lot of time through searching, and trial and error, figuring out how to do it myself. To the novice, the language of recording is very intimidating, extremely baffling, and appears to be at least partly written in some sort of alien hieroglyphics.
When I first started into digital recording, there were no good tutorials, at least none that I could find and understand. It made my brain hurt.
Your instructions and tips are great, and really take a lot of the brain pain out of it.
You have written a very concise, well thought out set of instructions for all types of analog to digital conversion, highlighting every one of the important, pertinent points along the way.
If you don't mind, I will pass the link along to others struggling with it.
Thank you,
Don

John McClung · From: Olympia WA, USA

Don, I own, but haven't tried yet, a promising little box called the ION U-record USB recording kit. It'll record from any line source with RCA output jacks. It has a phono/line switch, the phone setting does some magic required to get good recordings from a turntable. Set to line, it can take input from cassettes or any other source.

ION is more known for their USB cassette decks and USB turntables, but those suckers are costly and too specific. This thing I bought from B&H Photo/Video for $50. I hope it works, I'll post results when I've had the chance to try it.

So as long as your computer has USB input slots, the conversion process should be quite simple.
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