What is the best way to record Cassette to MP3???

[mtbound10]

Hey all,

My brother is in town for the weekend and got into a long conversation with a 70 year old deadhead who got him thinking about his old cassettes and bootlegs...

Anyway, he knows I am a little more well read about this topic but when it comes to this particular area I am not quite sure! What is the best way... Equipment and in regards to setting up to be able to transfer cassette tapes to MP3 format or CD for that matter?

Thanks in advance for the help guys!

Mtbound

 

[Exit]

I think I saw something like what you are looking for at DAK.com. They have some interesting stuff for converting old formats to new ones anyway.

 

[mtbound10]

Perfect...

Thanks Exit!

It looks like good stuff and affordable to. Have you ever ordered from DAK before? Some of their stuff looks pretty tacky but I will assume that they offer only good stuff as you would not offer me bad advice!

Thanks again!!!

 

[MDS]

If you already have a cassette deck, all you need is a 2-RCA to 3.5mm stereo mini cable and and an audio editor. Audacity is a good free audio editor, although I use SoundForge.

Some of these packages give you very little control and just record automatically. Be leery of automatic track separation and automatic hiss removal. The tracks will be 'separated' based on detecting silence - but what level of silence? -50 dB, -60 dB, etc? Each tape will be different. Simply removing 'hiss' by applying a 'noise gate' (a function of most audio editors) will not actually do much for hiss and sometimes will end up removing actual sounds that are low in level but very audible.

If you want really good results there is no way around the learning curve of learning to use a good editor and doing it yourself manually.

 

[Exit]

Thanks Exit!

It looks like good stuff and affordable to. Have you ever ordered from DAK before? Some of their stuff looks pretty tacky but I will assume that they offer only good stuff as you would not offer me bad advice!

Thanks again!!!

I ordered about $500 of equipment from them in the 1980s and everything worked out well. They were out of business for awhile and they reopened maybe two or three years ago. The owner/ad writer is Drew Kaplan and I found him to be very knowledgeable and accurate in his advertisements of the benefits of his products. I would order something now if I found something I needed.

I think the most expensive thing he carries is probably $100 or so and a lot of stuff seems to be $30 or less. It seems to me that that is not to much risk if you find something you want. Buy it on a credit card and you have the credit card backing where they will remove the charge if you report a problem. He usually gets bulk overstock, or items which were not effectively marketed and are selling at a deep discount. He then sells them at a substantial discount. I try to look through the site monthly to look for bargains. As the other guy who posted notes, there may be several alternatives to accomplish your goal and I would give them all due consideration.

 

[mtbound10]

Thanks for the help guys...

I will look up both the software and the hardware options. I know my brother already has a cassette deck so I think his first step would probably be the software trial...

I will let you know how it goes!

 

[hjfischer]

If you already have a cassette deck, all you need is a 2-RCA to 3.5mm stereo mini cable and and an audio editor. Audacity is a good free audio editor, although I use SoundForge.

Some of these packages give you very little control and just record automatically. Be leery of automatic track separation and automatic hiss removal. The tracks will be 'separated' based on detecting silence - but what level of silence? -50 dB, -60 dB, etc? Each tape will be different. Simply removing 'hiss' by applying a 'noise gate' (a function of most audio editors) will not actually do much for hiss and sometimes will end up removing actual sounds that are low in level but very audible.

If you want really good results there is no way around the learning curve of learning to use a good editor and doing it yourself manually.

Same here. I use the same cabling and Audacity. Works well. I also recommend listening to the recording as it is being made, with headphones so you can hear the result and any problems that may arise.

 

[bandphan]

Hey all,

My brother is in town for the weekend and got into a long conversation with a 70 year old deadhead who got him thinking about his old cassettes and bootlegs...

Anyway, he knows I am a little more well read about this topic but when it comes to this particular area I am not quite sure! What is the best way... Equipment and in regards to setting up to be able to transfer cassette tapes to MP3 format or CD for that matter?

Thanks in advance for the help guys!

Mtbound

Id just check etree(bt.etree.org) to see if the shows are in flac and download them muck quicker than converting.

 

[GlocksRock]

I would just record the whole side of the tape as a single file, then cut/paste the songs into new tracks... looking at the waveform you will be able to see where the tracks split, plus you can just listen to it too. It's not a difficult thing to do, just a bit time consuming.

 

[bandphan]

CD WAVE for track splitting
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http://www.milosoftware.com/cdwave/