Need help- Cassettes to Computer

[rev383]

Howdy all!

I have a lot of cassette tapes that I would like to copy onto my computer hard drive. Some of the tapes are starting to degrade and not available in CD or any other format.

I need a basic primer or to be pointed towards one.

I have a newer Technics component stereo system and a new Compaq computer.
My sound card has two outputs for surround sound, a single microphone input and a game port.

I believe the microphone input is mono, even though I couldn’t say for sure. I would like to maintain the stereo qualities of my cassettes.

Can it be as simple as cabling from my cassette deck preamp outputs to a sound card?

What would be a good software package to manage this?

Any help recovering the bad tapes would be appreciated also.

Thanks for any help you can provide!!!!

Jim

 

[pr4f2s4r]

what i would do

hi:
i think your sound card includes a line input ( if not, buy another one).
as you said, connect the deck's line out to the line in of your sound card.
a good and complete program to use is Sound Forge (it has a record window, an equalizer, an edit window, a lot of effects and much more; all with a lot of factory and user presets)(go to Sonic Foundry's web site to know more).
take care that you have to set the input level of your sound card from the Windows recording mixer.

 

[gibs]

Cool Edit Pro has a free download with limitations, such as limited functions at one time, etc, but you can see how recording software works without buying it outright....this is the free demo site http://www.syntrillium.com/cep/prodemo.htm

connect your tape deck as pr4f2s4r said...DON'T use the microphone IN on yer soundcard, use LINE....

One neat feature of Cool Edit, is the noise reduction..it'll get rid of a lot of hiss when you activate it, and you can clean up old vinyl recording sounds a little bit too.....you'll have fun....gibs

 

[ola]

What soundcard do you have? You might want to get a decent one before getting it to all the trouble with copying your tapes to your computer. A less than $50 investment could turn your results from "shite" to "pretty darn good".

/Ola