recording from an analog source?

[Wadded Beef]

howdy!

my brother is a son of the 80's and wants to put his tape collection on his pc. what's the best (read: easiest) way to record stuff using the audio in? thank you!!

 

[CyraKrin]

go to the dollar store, get RCA > headphone jacks, and go aux out of whatever player into the mic or line in of your soundcard and record it via whatever software you like.

 

[Mloot]

PC cassette deck - You know you want one!

 

[bigalt]

this may be a situation where one can argue that you own the music and so it would be legal to download it as well. i think you'll find that it will sound a lot better if you do.

 

[sharkeeper]

PC cassette deck - You know you want one!

That is cool! :thumbsup:

 

[redly]

Originally posted by: Mloot
PC cassette deck - You know you want one!

I would have so had one of those if I had known how to run a computer in 1991

 

[jlee]

Originally posted by: Mloot
PC cassette deck - You know you want one!

:thumbsup:

Man..it's expensive, though.

 

[Wadded Beef]

Originally posted by: CyraKrin
go to the dollar store, get RCA > headphone jacks, and go aux out of whatever player into the mic or line in of your soundcard and record it via whatever software you like.

riight... what i'm asking is which software do i use, and how?

 

[sohcrates]

I just did this but with vinyl instead of tapes

Run RCA's into line in of sound card. I recorded using soundforge. but you could also use cool edit. or even wav recorder integrated with windows.

then simply take the wav's and convert to mp3 with a proggy of your choice. i'm sure lots of people have suggestions for good software to do that. i just burned the wav's straight to cd using nero

 

[jlee]

Originally posted by: Wadded Beef

Originally posted by: CyraKrin
go to the dollar store, get RCA > headphone jacks, and go aux out of whatever player into the mic or line in of your soundcard and record it via whatever software you like.

riight... what i'm asking is which software do i use, and how?

1) Plug your tape player into line-in on sound card

2) Start your audio program of choice (Windows sound recorder, Goldwave, whatever)

3) Hit record/press play

4) Profit?

 

[Wadded Beef]

2) Start your audio program of choice (Windows sound recorder, Goldwave, whatever)

i just needed to know which program to use. thx

 

[SuperPickle]

Originally posted by: bigalt

this may be a situation where one can argue that you own the music and so it would be legal to download it as well. i think you'll find that it will sound a lot better if you do.

You know, there's much truth to this. If he bought the music, he bought the rights to listen to and use this music as a personal entity. Whatever your stance is on downloading, I'd think he'd have personal rights to each song provided he has the original cassette to prove he bought the 'album.'

On the other hand, go with what CyranKrin said except your should always go into the line input instead of the mic input because of impedence matching. Plugging a tape player output to a computer mic input will be far too hot - although possible to do, not advised.

 

[Dragonbate]

I'd also reccomend software that will automatically separate the tracks into seperate mp3s. I did this awhile back with musicmatch I believe. You can find free olderversions at oldversion.com. I also found from this experience that downloading the same songs tened to be of a better quality. Tapes begin to deteriorate fairly quickly and are not high quality to begin with. I'd still recommend going the recording route. It was interesting to do and satisfying to tranfer music I owned to format that will not deteriorate over time.

 

[Wadded Beef]

got em, i used audacity sound recorder. thanks 4 the help!

 

[aircooled]

I like Goldwave with Lame plug-in for direct to MP3 from audio source.

 

[BespinReactorShaft]

Originally posted by: Mloot
PC cassette deck - You know you want one!

Wow... just wow... too late for me though, my cassette collection is in analog heaven now.