need help with recording to PC

[new@this]

I appreciate any help from all you experts out there. I have several cassettes I want to put on cd, preferably mp3 style. I hooked my cassette deck " line out L-R" using a dual cable on one end and a single on the other end I plugged into the back of the pc's line IN. I down Loaded the program Waveflow and recorded a 4 min. sample. I can listen to the music being recorded, but when I played it back it was terrible, very scratchy like trying to squeeze all that sound out of a tiny speaker. I tried various settings in the Volume control center under options,properties, recording. I could not check the box for line IN in recording control. I am using Windows XP. My PC is supposed to be brand new top of the line for all media, HP Media center pc M370n. so what gives? What am I doing wrong here. Oh by the way. I did try to click on advanced tab in Souns and Audio devices for recording and it is greyed outm will not let me change this at all. Any help please. Thank you.

 

[joro]

Hi,
It's not your computer...it's your signal chain...
Your tape deck does not modulate enough power to push the signal...you need an amplifier...just as if you were to use it with your stereo...

be careful though man....too much and.....well....it could blow your soundcard....or your chip set...whatever it is...

BTW......


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and cake too...

 

[MonkeyShock]

This is worth a try...

I've been there. I think what I did, was to go from the headphone jack of the tape deck to the mic in on the pc, then after a bit of playing with volume controls I was able to get an adequate, but not excellent sound file. If that doesn't do it, try line out of deck, to mic in on pc...I don't think I ever got line in to work on pc, I don't know why. If this works, you can then remove most of the hiss or extra noise that might occur,with cool edit 96 with the noise reduction tool. If you get that far let me know and I'll walk you through it as I've had plenty of help from everyone here. hth

 

[TexRoadkill]

Do you have some type of level meter on that software? How high is the signal level?

The other issue is what format are you recording them in? The quality of encoding can make a HUGE difference. CD quality is 16bit 44.1khz. A good MP3 encode rate is at least 128K.