Hi,

My parents have loads of compact cassettes, and some are quite valuable due them having study materials on them (they are remedial teachers).

However it's getting more difficult to get hold of tapes, as well as the quality of the tapes is obviously degrading over time/use.

So the idea is to transfer the material over to CD.

Using sound record is an option but it only does 60 seconds at a time, which is frankly useless :P

I've not used anything like this myself, so thought I'd pop a question here to see what you use for this.

The PC is running XP Pro, and it is a fairly decent spec, so it ought to cope with having to have a substantial amount of disc space used.

Would this be a two stage process, i.e. first digitise the tapes as .wav files or similar, then drop onto a CDR to package it up? Or is there a program that could do this for me.

Although I am about in NL for a bit, it would be good if the program was fairly easy to use, so my parents can use it themselves on their own. They are pretty computer literate, but a simple 'just does the job' type thing would be excellent.

Thanks in advance

Lots of things available. Roxio Easy Media Creator and Nero 7 can both do this, and at the same time have a reasonable stab at removing the tape hiss. Alternativly, I remember that my old creative labs 20GB mp3 player could also record and convert in realtime to MP3 format through a line in.

you will need the necessary cables to attach the cassette player to the PC. if your computer supports it a normal 3.5mm to 3.5mm will work but the quality wont be outstanding. If your pc supports it the SPDIF connection will give better quality.

The connection is line out to line in, so should be reasonable, will check out Roxio etc, that should do the job

Thanks so far

i been toying with this one for a while too, at what volume would you set the tape player at and what level would you set the line in/mic at?

Ideally you'd use the proper line out, if you use the headphone socket I'd try to set the volume at a level where with headphones it's clearly audible but not particularly loud, then drop in the lead. Then adjust the input volume so the A/D converters dont clip, as that causes massive distortion.

Can be quite good fun this :P

this is why ive never done it before i have a couple of tapes i want doing but not much sucess either doing them in the past.

1, Audacity - open source, so free

2, Magix Cleaning lab - I've heard the latest is actually quite good about

I have used the Magix product for albums to cd and that was fine.

I am guessing it would also work on tapes too.

I got one of these from Santa last year...

Plus Deck Cassette Converter

PlusDeck Cassette Converter

That last one is an expensive option, but not a bad one for my parents