Copy tapes to CD

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mmgroup

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I want to copy my old audio tapes to CD. From this forum, I found that the microphone jack is for decoration only. Since this is a laptop, the only jacks are a keyboard jack, a USB port, and a PC-Card slot. I'm not interested in doing anything other than recording the music and putting it on a CD. The cassette player has a mini-stereo earphone jack only. Assuming there is a connector which gets the sound to the computer, how do I record it? (Windows' sound recorder stops at 60 seconds.) What format do I want it in (there are all kind of settings about sampling rate, etc.) And then, how do I get it in the right format for the CD.

All this because my truck only has a CD player. (I know, buy a cassette player and leave it in the truck!) Realistically, though, I'm looking to transition stuff on old media to newer.

Thanks
 
I had a friend of mine do this for me once.
He had a cassette 4 track and a stand alone digital recorder of some kind.
He took the outputs from the 4 track, and plugged them into the inputs of the digital recorder. AD/DA conversion was done inside the digital recorder. The final format was .wav. It worked, but I thought the sound quality was less than ideal. But then again, the source was cassette tape.
 
sounds like an exercise in futility!

your cassette player doesnt have regular stereo connections?

you want to record from a cassette walkman to a laptop with a cd-r but no line input?

does the laptop have a cdr?

and after all this your casettes will be on cd?

i cant laugh at you here because youre a newbie.

go to one of the other forums so i can laugh at you ok?
 
Jeap,

Seems like an odd response. Do you think audio tapes will be around forever?

My cassette player does not have regular (RCA plug) connections.
The cassette player is actually a boombox style.
Yes, the laptop has a CD-R
Yes, after all this my cassettes will be on CD. Exactly.
It's ok to laugh.

Michael,
Obviously I'm not going for the quality and control which you folks in the music business require, so it seems to me there may well be a software program which will permit recording an analog signal of any duration, and perhaps cleaning the signal to remove hum and hiss. I guess it really doesn't matter if side one of the tape is recorded as a single song (just so it fits). I recorded a 60-second sample and the file was about 1.3MB, so some compressions will be needed.
Thanks for the idea.
 
if you had the right equipment it would be a very simple matter of playing the cassettes through the line in of a soundcard and into a basic version of soundforge or cooledit or any of a number of basic software programs.

then you could apply a noise filter and seperate the songs into seperate files and then burn them to cd's.

it would be tedious but doable.

*but you dont have the right equipment*

what you need is a friend like michael has!

the only reason i can think of to do this is if you had irreplaceable music on your cassettes. otherwise you could just buy cd's or download the songs and burn them.
 
Hey mmgroup, I think I know what it is you might be looking for. There is a software program called EZ Audio / Transfer & Restoration Kit by SONY. It allows you to transfer and restore cassettes, records and other audio files. Clean them up, edit, and burn cd's. The kit comes with the program disk, RCA cable 1/8 to Y adapter. Y 1/4 adapter. The best part is I didn't have to pawn one of my amps or guitars to accomplish just what you are wishing to do. Cost was $48 and change. The sound quality will surprise you, depending on the sound going in of course. For what it does, I'm a happy camper. And no, I don't work for Sony.
 
i guess you could go headphone out to line in...

but you dont have a line in!!!

maybe there is a usb interface for the headphone jack!

i dont know!

vintagedrive: he doesnt have any way to hook up those cables!!!
 
You don't want to use data compression for burning a CD. It needs the full 16bit 44.1khz .wav file. Expect to use up to 650MB for a full CD.
 
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