Recording with cassette tape and laptop

[johnathanmathew]

the laptop that i'm using is pretty old, and I really don't know If it can handle doing overdubs/
and aside from this, I don't really have any kind of digital interface to use with it, to accept XLR




I'm used to recording through audacity, using a decent desktop system with an Emu sound card and
external interface, but I'm not able to use these things right now




do there exist any one-track cassette recorders? something that could use the whole width of a
cassette tape at a reasonably high speed for one track?

 

[bouldersoundguy]

How old is the laptop? I still do a lot of stuff on an old XP desktop with a single 2GHz chip and 1.5G of RAM. Overdubs and track count is mostly about drive speeds. Things like amp sims and good reverbs will need more CPU power. If you're doing basic mixes without heavy sims and multiple high grade reverbs you may be fine with a USB interface.

I don't think I've heard of a full-track cassette recorder. The closest you'll get is 2-track mono, but those machines are generally the cheaper portable decks, not designed for high audio quality.

 

[miroslav]

do there exist any one-track cassette recorders? something that could use the whole width of a
cassette tape at a reasonably high speed for one track?

Why would you want to even go this route....if they even existed?

What's the reason for one track width? Do you think it will make for better quality?

 

[TimN]

A bad idea . . . if you want to go lo-fi like that, just use a cassette player and record out through one track . . . Tascams and other cassette players will record at 3 3/4 speed, but why? Why would you want to use a piss-poor medium like that? If you are forced to do that right now, scotch the whole thing and simply write music and merely think about recording things for now, until your current situation is resolved. That E-mu card is light-years better than your average cassette player . . . .