I used audacity to do exactly this last week with some cassettes recorded in 1984. I simply plugged the output jack plug into the microphone socket of my pc.
Maybe I should add that this was purely so that I could listen to them on my cd player, not to make anything like a professional copy. If the cassettes are rare/valuable then you need to take all the precautions outlined by Dennis (and it would do you no harm to take those precautions anyway.) Cheers, Lawrence On 1 December 2012 17:53, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz <bath...@maltedmedia.com>wrote: > Mark, > > I do restoration, so here are a few suggestions. > > 1. Make sure your cassette player is in good shape -- clean, able to pull > tapes without damage, heads aligned. If not, STOP and send it out. > 2. Note the tape tape. If it's 120-minute tape, send it out. > 3. First, do NOT play the tape. Rewind/play a few times to loosen the tape > pack. > 4. Repackage the cassette if you hear any binding at all (happy to send > you a > clear cassette case; I should have some left). > 5. Again, wind, rewind. Check the splice where the leader joins the tape by > winding the tape forward with a pencil. > 6. Set the playback correctly on the cassette deck (tape type, dolby on or > off, etc.) > 7. Play some of the tape and make sure it's going correctly. If it fades > in/out or gets muffled, STOP. The tape is slipping and it will be damaged. > Send it out. > 8. Otherwise, take a small phillips screwdriver and adjust the tape head > angle > for best high-frequency playback while the tape is playing. It may not need > any adjustment, but in any case will be small. > > Once you've got it playing well, the rest is up to do you. I don't use > Macs, > so can't recommend conversion software. I'm on PC and use a Saffire Pro 40 > interface for conversion and clean up noise, etc., in Adobe Audition. > > Dennis > > > > > On Sat, December 1, 2012 12:30 pm, Mark D Lew wrote: > > I have a cassette tape recording from a live performance of mine from 20+ > > years ago, and I want to convert it to a digital format. Nothing fancy. > I > > just want to be able to listen to it on a CD player or iTunes. > > > > What's the simplest way to do that? Is there some tool I can get to do > it > > myself, or should I take it to a service somewhere? And if the latter, > what > > should I be looking for? > > > > I'm on Mac, and I do still have a cassette tape player with an output > jack. > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > Finale@shsu.edu > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > -- Lawrenceyates.co.uk _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
