Convert 60 cassettes to mp3

maumau

maumau

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During a clean up I found about 60 music cassettes recorded by a friend. It looks like good stuff. Can anyone recommend a reliable converter that plugs into PC? The thought of struggling is putting me off.

I've asked for a quote from professionals but haven't heard from them yet.

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Could probably find a tape deck with a line out and connect it to the line in of your pc or soundcard / audio interface & record using something free like Audacity. Probably easier to just buy digital copies of this stuff and arrange into similar playlists. The quality of those tape -> digital conversions probably isn't gonna be great.
 
maumau said:
During a clean up I found about 60 music cassettes recorded by a friend. It looks like good stuff. Can anyone recommend a reliable converter that plugs into PC? The thought of struggling is putting me off.

I've asked for a quote from professionals but haven't heard from them yet.

View attachment 640058
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I did my own using cool edit and a portable tape cassette player.

It's time consuming
 
saor said:
Could probably find a tape deck with a line out and connect it to the line in of your pc or soundcard / audio interface & record using something free like Audacity. Probably easier to just buy digital copies of this stuff and arrange into similar playlists. The quality of those tape -> digital conversions probably isn't gonna be great.
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Yeah I was wondering about the quality.

..... thanks for the input @saor, I should take a listen to them before rushing in and coverting.

The tapes are all mixes each with a theme. I think the original CDs are still around but it would take forever to recreate them.

Would it work if I convert the original CDs to MP3 and do the mixes on PC? Is there a simple free programme to do the conversion?
 
saor said:
Could probably find a tape deck with a line out and connect it to the line in of your pc or soundcard / audio interface & record using something free like Audacity. Probably easier to just buy digital copies of this stuff and arrange into similar playlists. The quality of those tape -> digital conversions probably isn't gonna be great.
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True. I replaced most of my cassets with the CD version back in the 80's already.
 
maumau said:
Yeah I was wondering about the quality.

..... thanks for the input @saor, I should take a listen to them before rushing in and coverting.

The tapes are all mixes each with a theme. I think the original CDs are still around but it would take forever to recreate them.

Would it work if I convert the original CDs to MP3 and do the mixes on PC? Is there a simple free programme to do the conversion?
Click to expand...
Yes there is.
Can't recall the one I used but it was brilliant. I'll look on my desktop and get back to you.
 
spiff said:
Once I got the feel of cool edit and how to use the filters to remove the hiss or pops it turned out good.
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OMW dat don't sound easy. Wanted a plug it in and walk away solution, so don't believe I'll go that route. Will post here when/ if I get a response from the company I asked for a quote.
 
maumau said:
OMW dat don't sound easy. Wanted a plug it in and walk away solution, so don't believe I'll go that route. Will post here when/ if I get a response from the company I asked for a quote.
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That's nothing.

When I recorded the tapes back in the 70s I did not leave space between the tracks - so I had to edit and separate the different tracks. Was a labour of passion as some music didn't make it to CD.
 
spiff said:
That's nothing.

When I recorded the tapes back in the 70s I did not leave space between the tracks - so I had to edit and separate the different tracks. Was a labour of passion as some music didn't make it to CD.
Click to expand...

I can imagine. You must really love.music to go to all that trouble.
 
Jeez, I thought I had a lot of tapes.

Are yours still listenable? It would be a shame not to preserve the music in some way.

Problem is, those things stretch and break.
 
It might be worth listening to those tapes before you go through the effort of converting them. I bought a second hand tape deck last year with the intention of converting my old tape collection to mp3, but unfortunately many of the cassettes sound like they have lost most of their high frequencies. Some of the original cassettes sound better though.

If you have access to a cassette player, connect the line output on the player to the line input on your sound card using an rca to headphone jack cable and then record the audio using Audacity. Geewiz and Aliexpress sell walkman style, usb cassette players which Windows will detect as an audio device from which you can record sound. These are cheap looking devices so one should probably not expect too much from them in terms of sound quality.

There are online tutorials for converting cassettes to mp3 files using Audacity. Basically, you record the whole cassette to a wave file and then add labels where each song begins. Once all the tracks have been labelled, you export them to individual mp3 files.

Don't throw those tapes away, they are becoming collector's items amongst vintage audio enthusiasts.
 
maumau said:
Jeez, I thought I had a lot of tapes.

Are yours still listenable? It would be a shame not to preserve the music in some way.

Problem is, those things stretch and break.
Click to expand...
yeah it would be awesome to share those old school radio recordings onto Youtube :)
 
The easiest way is to just find a friend with those all-in-one hifis with a tape deck and usb input. Most of them have direct usb recording from tape.

Record one side of the tape as one big track, it makes post processing easier then just cut it up into tracks. An extra advantage is, no volume issues as gain is internally set.
 
bobcpt said:
It might be worth listening to those tapes before you go through the effort of converting them. I bought a second hand tape deck last year with the intention of converting my old tape collection to mp3, but unfortunately many of the cassettes sound like they have lost most of their high frequencies. Some of the original cassettes sound better though.

If you have access to a cassette player, connect the line output on the player to the line input on your sound card using an rca to headphone jack cable and then record the audio using Audacity. Geewiz and Aliexpress sell walkman style, usb cassette players which Windows will detect as an audio device from which you can record sound. These are cheap looking devices so one should probably not expect too much from them in terms of sound quality.

There are online tutorials for converting cassettes to mp3 files using Audacity. Basically, you record the whole cassette to a wave file and then add labels where each song begins. Once all the tracks have been labelled, you export them to individual mp3 files.

Don't throw those tapes away, they are becoming collector's items amongst vintage audio enthusiasts.
Click to expand...

Great advice @bobcpt. Sounds as if you're in the business :)

..... would have listened to them first for quality and then probably thrown them in the bin. Def not going to do that now.

Luckily we're not wildly busy at work so have time to check this out.
 
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