Cassette to MP3

allycavs

Hi guys

We have cassettes which you cant get as CD. Non commercial recorded music that has sentimental value.

I copied cassette using audcity bout found the quality audible but not good. The cassette sounds better.Im hoping to least match quality of cassette. I plugged cassette player from headphone jack to my mic port. Is there a alternative. ive been reading bout line-in ports?

Or ive seen little cassette players that record to mp3. Maplin have one called ION TAPE 2 GO USB . reviews are poor

Has anyone experience of this or similar product. price not really a issue but i cany find product like above where reviews were good. All similar products had mix reviews

Thanks
Alan

Sabre Man

I have used Audacity for cassettes and LPs. The quality varied from OK to not that good but I think it depends on the volume used when recording with Audacity as well as on other settings.

Here are some tips:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sample_workflow_for_lp_digitization.html

allycavs

Thanks. ya i followed the tips. Im just wondering now is the cassette player above a better option

mordeith

allycavs wrote: »

Thanks. ya i followed the tips. Im just wondering now is the cassette player above a better option

You're never going to get great quality from an ordinary cassette. The hiss will always be picked up. Some software has automatic hiss removal but this usually leads to a rather dull sound. Any time I've had to do it I usually do some tweaking with compression and EQ'ing afterwards. Audacity has some tool for this AFAIK but I use FLStudio myself (which I have anyway for music purposes).

Wizard!

allycavs wrote: »

I plugged cassette player from headphone jack to my mic port. Is there a alternative. ive been reading bout line-in ports?

You should try line-in. Output signal from headphone jack, is too powerful for mic-in. Most probably, your sound card, has auto cut-off to avoid damage.

I don't know if you are using the onboard audio card, but if it's a Realtek chip, you can get a much better one, for around 30-50€, asus/creative

allycavs

Hi Wizard - i have a joint mic/line in jack. in fact i think its just mic!! and yeah its a Realtek chip so guess i really dont have right equipment. is there a 3.5mm to usb cable (headphone to usb) that would give better quality?

I fully expect the his from cassette i just want cd to match cassette quality pretty much.

Wizard!

I do not think, a USB card would have a good sound, since there are only chips inside and not any electrical circuit, which treats analog signals better. A decent and cheap card is Asus Xonar. If you are using a laptop though, you can buy a USB, but you have to spend more than 60-70€ to get a decent sound.