CONVERTING CASSETTES TO DIGITAL CDS
With the changing technology it seems that there is a frequent need to convert the old technology to the new technology to be able to access some of our memories. It was not many years ago that most music came in the form of 45 rpm records. And then came 33 1/3 rpm and long play albums. After that came 8 track tapes which were shortly replaced by audio cassettes. It was easy to get the music from a record to a cassette. Now there is a need to get the music from the cassettes to the computer so that CDs can be burned. The effort required to get the music onto the computer is about the same amount as the effort of getting the records to cassette. There is software that can be used to clean up the digital signal from stereos or cassettes players, but I am not going to discuss that here. This will address only the transfer of music to the computer.
There are five items required to make a convenient transfer. Starting with a computer with a jack for a recording input. All computers that I have seen in the last ten years have that jack. Second a "jumper wire" with an 1/8" stereo phone plug on each end is required. Don't make the mistake that I made and get one that is too short. I bought an 18" length and I wish I had a 36" one. Radio shack has wires for about $6.00 to $10.00. While it is not absolutely necessary a stereo to stereo headphone adapter is very desirable. Good quality adapters are available at Radio Shack for about $6.00. If you want to hear the music being recorded then one is necessary. A set of earphones, or ear buds is required. Of course a boom box or other cassette playing device is required.
The procedure is actually simple once all connections are made. First find the sound recorder on your computer. It can be found in programs/accessories on Vista and somewhere in programs on other systems. Look for the picture of the microphone. It can also be found by making a search for "Sound Recorder". When it is opened it will appear like this. This is the control that starts and stops the recording.
Plug the double ended "jumper" wire into the input jack of the computer. You may get a drop down box that looks like this. Select microphone, and left click OK. Plug the other end of the wire into the stereo to stereo headphone adapter. Plug your headphones into the other female opening. Plug the male stereo plug into the headphone jack on the boom box. Except for plugging in the boom box into an electrical outlet, provided you have not done that already, you have made all the connections necessary to record cassettes to the computer.
Place a cassette in the player. Press the play button until you hear the first note of the first song. Stop, back up the tape just a slight amount. This can be effectively done with the small finger on the cassette tape itself. Failing to do this is apt to cause a long silent lead-in before the music starts. On most boom boxes there is a pause button, press that down. Then press the play button. As long as the pause button is down nothing will happen. With one hand release the pause button on the boom box AND at the same time with the other hand left click the start recording icon of the sound recorder. You will hear the music through the earphones, the red circle on the sound recorder will change to a blue square and a green bar indicating the recording volume will appear on the sound recorder. It will also show how long recording has been going on. This is handy when the cassette indicates the length of the song.
When the song ends press the pause button on the boom box at the same time as left clicking the stop recording icon on the sound recorder. The computer will automatically pick a location to save the sound clip and assign it a name. The default location will likely be your documents and the name will be Untitled (?) with a number. I would suggest at this point that you write in "01" followed by the actual name of the song. The next song will be "02" etc through the number required for the whole cassette. This will keep the songs in the same order as on the cassette. Later create a folder with the name of the cassette and move all the songs into that folder with a left click and drag. This folder with all the songs in it can be moved to a location in the computers music folder or where ever you desire.
After the song is renamed from Untitled (?) to the correct name and saved you are ready to record the next song. Again press the "Start Recording" at the same time as you release the pause button on the boom box. Repeat this process for each song on the cassette. Be sure to listen to the digitized songs to check for proper recording volumes or other problems. Too much boom box volume will cause distortion of recorded sound. Too little will cause a different distortion. You may have to experiment to get the exact settings you need. Make a short recording, not even a complete single song. Listen to it and if it sounds good digitize the complete songs.
A CD-R will hold two average cassettes. I think it would be logical to burn two cassettes of the same artist or genre to a CD. Do not burn music to a CD-RW. For some reason it will not play on most CD players.
