[Novalug] converting old cassette audio tapes to digital

Tom Gutnick tgutnick@gmail.com
Fri Nov 27 09:15:25 EST 2015


I have done this, successfully, with both cassettes and vinyl.

The quality of the finished product will depend on the quality of the
original cassette, the device you use to play back the cassette, and the
quality of the analog-to-digital conversion (either by the Ion device or the
PC's soundcard). Here's the basic process (somewhat simplistically
described; I can fill in details on request):

1. Connect the device to the computer. (Ion = USB, the most convenient. Or
run a cable from the cassette player's line-out to the soundcard's line-in.)
2. While playing back the cassette, record the signal using some software;
Audacity is quite reasonable for the purpose. You'll want to spot-check the
sound levels before you do the final recording. (You want to get the volume
at about the highest possible level without it hitting into the red. If you
red-line it, you'll get "clipping", which is a form of distortion.)
3. You *could* babysit the recording process to make note of, and perhaps
split off into separate files, where the individual song tracks start, but I
prefer to do a single take for each side of the cassette. Audacity (and
other software) has a feature to infer the split points from the silence.
But I personally find it quicker and easier to look at the wave form to
locate the likely spots visually, scrub to pinpoint precisely, and mark the
spots manually.
4. Before splitting into the individual songs, do the noise removal -- for
vinyl, reduce pops/clicks, and for cassettes remove hiss. If there is other
background noise (depending upon all the electronics involved in the chain),
remove that too. Audacity has the tools to do all this.  It can take a fair
bit of trial-and-error -- too much noise reduction can reduce the overall
audio quality, so sometimes you have to decide how much noise you're willing
to live with.
5. If you'll be playing back the final result on some kind of audio player
(iPod, smartphone, etc.), save as MP3 or Ogg-Vorbis. If you'll be burning
onto a CD, save uncompressed, as WAV or AIFF. (For interim storage, you can
save as FLAC -- it's lossless compression, so not as bulky as WAV, but with
no loss of audio quality that you get with MP3 or Ogg.)

Like I said before, I've done this many times. My recommendation (to myself
and others) is that if the particular recording is already available on CD,
it's better to just pay the $18 or whatever. I only use this process for
media that have not been reissued in digital form.

Hope this helps,
Tom

> -----Original Message-----
> Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 15:13:33 -0500 (EST)
> From: Bonnie Dalzell <bdalzell@qis.net>
> To: novalug@firemountain.net
> Subject: [Novalug] converting old cassette audio tapes to digital
> Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.02.1511261434090.9935@Xubuntu-RedDragon>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> 
> as part of the great clean up I have been unearthing my collection of old
> cassette audio tapes and I have decided I want to try and convert them to
> digital.
> 
> this device has mixed reviews
> 
> Ion Tape2PC USB Cassette Deck
> 
> http://cassette-to-mp3-review.toptenreviews.com/tape-2-pc-review.html
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VG802I/?tag=ttr_cassette-to-
> mp3-converter-
> 20&ascsubtag=[site|ttr[cat|806[art|NA[pid|52429[tid|NA[bbc|NA
> 
> however its software (EZ Tape Converter)  which has better reviews than
> audacity is listed as comaptible with mac and windows XP or Vista.
> 
> a lot of XP software runs well under WINE these days but not all of it.
> 
> has anyone here had experience with audio cassette conversions?
> 
> I have not been able to determine if this device can feed its signal into
> Audacity.
> 




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