How do I get cassette recordings into my computer?

Question

What Hardware, software and format should I use?

Answer 1

Put simply, you will need to connect your cassette player to your PC soundcard, then play the cassette whilst recording on your PC. A step-by-step guide is available at:

http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/DIY/index.p...

(follow the link to ‘Cassette to CD‘)

The recording software is the key, there are some free software downloads available at:

http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/downloads.p...

I have used ‘Magix Audio Cleaning Lab’ and ‘Audacity’ – Audacity is particularly popular since it is free!

If you record to WAV format, expect file sizes of around 10MB per minute, or 1MB per minute for MP3 (at 128kbps).

Once you have your digital versions of the recording on your PC, simply burn them on to a CD (Nero burning software or similar..). If you use Magix Audio Cleaning, the software will burn an audio CD for you without needing additional software (assuming you have a CD writing drive of course!)

With Audacity, you will need the additional 'lame_enc.dll' file to export into MP3 - this can also be downloaded from the free software page.

You can also download a free PDF version of the step-by–step guide from the download page mentioned above, the guide is complete with diagrams and screen-shots.

Formats are up to you, read more about 'lossey' versus 'lossless' here:

http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/mp3.htm

'WAV' format will give you the best quality, but will cost you hard-drive space, if you want to save them to a playable CD, there is no point going for anything other than WAV format

Answer 2

i don't know for sure, but i would guess that you could plug a tape player into a "new" (current generation) receiver.  from there it should be simple to input the sound into the computer with any basic sound recording program.  you should be able to find some on the internet or any computer software store.  i'm sure if you go to a store anyone there will be able to guide you in the right direction.