How can I transfer music fom cassette player to my Laptop?

Question

I have tried using Audacity and also added Trust external sound card USB but inline just does not work. Ideas/advice would be much appreciated. Everyone seems to have different opinions on this but to no avail......

Answer 1

As you point out you will need a USB external device because the mic input on a laptop is usually mono, make sure that you follow all the instructions in the following guide...This works for me every time....

Put simply, you will need to connect your cassette player to your PC soundcard, then play the cassette whilst recording on your PC. A step-by-step guide is available at:

http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/DIY/index.php

(follow the link to ‘Cassette to CD‘)

The recording software is the key, there are some free software downloads available at:

http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/downloads.php

I have used ‘Magix Audio Cleaning Lab’ and ‘Audacity’ – Audacity is particularly popular since it is free!

If you record to WAV format, expect file sizes of around 10MB per minute, or 1MB per minute for MP3 (at 128kbps).

Once you have your digital versions of the recording on your PC, simply burn them on to a CD (Nero burning software or similar..). If you use Magix Audio Cleaning, the software will burn an audio CD for you without needing additional software (assuming you have a CD writing drive of course!)

You will need the additional 'lame_enc.dll' file to export into MP3 - this can also be downloaded from the free software page.

You can also download a free PDF version of the step-by–step guide from the download page mentioned above, the guide is complete with diagrams and screen-shots.

Hope this helps (if you like the online guide, don't forget to 'DIGG' it....)

Answer 2

I was going to suggest Audacity, and connecting from cassette player to line-in.



Seems your problem is your line-in port. I don't know why it doesn't work, but that's where to concentrate your debugging efforts.



Does your cassette player have an actual line-out jack? If not you can use the headphone jack, but then adjusting the volume on the cassette player becomes important. If not adjusted right the level going out to the line-in on the computer can be either way too high (it will distort) or way too low (you can't hear it!) That might be your problem.



Otherwise there might be a software driver you need to use the sound hardware on the computer.



I never heard of the Trust external sound card, but that also might need a driver or something. (I just looked it up on Google and it looks pretty good!) Are you sure you've got it installed properly?

Answer 3

Ehm..

If you are wondering which is the best music editor avaiable on the web, it is Audacity.

You can easily download it for free from this link: http://bitly.com/1mFajmj



Audacity is a really complete software for editing and creating music. If you are interested in this topic it is a must have program!

It s a completely safe and reliable program that suits all the needs of any digital musician, from the beginner to the advanced user.

Have a nice day

Answer 4

use musicmatch. and record using line-in. it will give you great sound as well as it being easy to use. click here http://www.musicmatch.com