Converting your old cassettes into flexible digital recordings is as easy as getting hold of the right leads and hooking up your tape deck to your computer. An external USB sound card will let you capture the audio source and using free sound editing software such as Audacity you can cut it up into individual tracks and then export as mp3 using the Lame encoder.
The Kam USBHUB100 will do the job just fine and comes with instructions on how to use Audacity to make your recordings. Here is what you do once you've connected everything:
- click Start/Control Panel
- double click Sounds and Audio Devices
- click the Audio tab and in the dropdown box underneath Sound recording Default device, select USB AUDIO CODEC
- click Apply and OK
- launch Audacity and click on Edit/Preferences
- in the Audio I/O tab window click on the dropdown menu next to Playback Device and select USB AUDIO CODEC
- click on the dropdown menu next to Recording Device and select USB AUDIO CODEC
- select Channels 2 (Stereo) and tick the box next to Software Playthrough
- Click OK
- Press the Play on your tape recorder
You may need to play around with the volume levels a little until you are happy with the sound of your recordings. The Kam USBHUB100 costs around £45 and to find out your local stockist, click here.
I use a piece of software called Music Match that came with the computer when I bought it- then I plug the cassette into the audio input at the back of the computer. I push play on the cassette and record in Music Match and it all just works.
My Christmas holiday task it to see if it will work with Parallels on my Mac!
Posted by: AllanahK | 16/12/2007 at 08:48
Cheers Allanah,
You can also buy a Coomber CD Recorder, but this is a lot more expensive than an external USB card:
http://www.coomber.co.uk/Products_6021.html
Posted by: Joe Dale | 16/12/2007 at 09:51