Digitizing Casette Tapes

That's what I did with a bunch of my old 12 in LP records. My sound card did not have a 'line in', so I tried using the 'mic in' and I guess the impedance match was good enough, at least for my tin ear. My computer geek friend likes riding in my car and hearing the needle noise when I'm playing from a USB flash drive.

One of my records got scratched so bad in about 1961 or 2 that it kept jumping back a couple of grooves. I used a sewing needle and magnifying glass to get the needle past the bad spot, so that's pretty wild, too. Music, jump about 2 or 3 grooves, play 2 revolutions, jumps 1 groove, then back to normal! What you do when you're a kid and it broke the bank to buy the record and replacing it is out of the question. Kind of nostalgic to hear record stuff on a digital car stereo! -- JHF

There are some services that do this. You send in the tapes, they return them with DVD copies. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to doing this, a few of them had lost audio.

You can also try to do it from home: http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/how-to-convert-vhs-to-dvd/

Connect your cassette player, like a Sony Walkman.

1. Use a Male x Male 1/8" stereo cable from your cassette to your line-in on your computer. I have done this with some of my Vinyl records.
2. Make sure the the recording settings are correct for your line-in. You may need to play with the recording options and levels in the sound settings on your software or line-in settings
3. Use your favorite sound editing program to digitize the music.
4. Burn to a CD or flash drive and you're good.

Hmm: Google search "Digitizing cassette tapes"

A simple Google search revealed many Cassette Tape convertors at Amazon. $60 or less will get you a decent one.

You can also buy a cassette to USB (external or that fits in a drive bay) that does the digitizing itself and sends the results to your computer by USB.

Have tried to digitalize some of my favorite music cassette tapes by using a convertor and also PC programmes but had little success. The levels and impedance matching issues made for rather distorted copies. Had a few done professionally and they turned out great. Also albeit a few years ago did some experimenting with a "cheap" Teac record player/CD recorder and obtained reasonable results but I no longer have that piece of equipment.

I would also use a lossless compression or uncompressed file format for the archive copy of "one of a kind" precious items like this. The file size will be considerably larger but you will have more options in the future to "clean up the sound". Storage is cheap anyway.

I'm set up so I can record anything playing on my computer to my old Windows 98 machine. Works great for Youtube. You can find just about any song you want there. I've also done vinyl abums to a CD of recordings you can't find anywhere. My neighbor wanted to do exactly the same thing you are doing and went a bought a machine to which I said, "Why did you waste your money? We could have done this at no cost." We already had several CD players sitting around.

I assume VHS tapes? LG makes/used to make a player/recorder that does exactly this. Quality is not bad..

I still have one stored somewhere at home. Will revert with the model number as soon as I remember (no I'm not that bad.......tomorrow)

'ear 'ear!!

I agree......

You must be a "Brit" or very close!!

Married to one once, but that's as close as I got.....

You caught some of the disease!!!

I have used Audacity for a number of projects like this!!

Free and works great!!

I ve been fantasizing digitizing my Bing Crosby White Christmas 78s to get that classic sound.