Ladies Cassette
How to Convert a Large Cassette Tape Collection to MP3?
A good friend of my family's is an older lady, with a large cassette tape collection, built over many years. I know that there is a way to convert these tapes to mp3s, and then burn to cds, but is this the best way, and how would I go about it? Is converting to mp3s too lossy of a format, or would a higher bitrate mp3 file work? I assume that I need to have some sort of tape player with a line in to the computer, and then record the sound coming from my sound card, but I am very foggy on the details. She has a device of some sort to record these tapes, but I was wondering how the actual process works. I would like to know the best way to preserve this large tape collection for future listening. Thank you very much,
First off this is my preferred method:
Put simply, you will need to connect your cassette player to your PC soundcard, then play the cassette whilst recording on your PC. A step-by-step guide is available at:
http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/DIY/index.php
(follow the link to ‘Cassette to CD‘)
The recording software is the key, there are some free software downloads available at:
http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/downloads.php
I have used ‘Magix Audio Cleaning Lab’ and ‘Audacity’ – Audacity is particularly popular since it is free!
If you record to WAV format, expect file sizes of around 10MB per minute, or 1MB per minute for MP3 (at 128kbps).
Once you have your digital versions of the recording on your PC, simply burn them on to a CD (Nero burning software or similar..). If you use Magix Audio Cleaning, the software will burn an audio CD for you without needing additional software (assuming you have a CD writing drive of course!)
You will need the additional 'lame_enc.dll' file to export into MP3 - this can also be downloaded from the free software page.
You can also download a free PDF version of the step-by–step guide from the download page mentioned above, the guide is complete with diagrams and screen-shots.
Hope this helps (if you like the online guide, don't forget to 'DIGG' it....)
Second, you asked about MP3 files (more on MP3 here:
http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/mp3.htm )
If you are burning MP3 to CD to play in a CD player, the player must be MP3 enabled otherwise the disc won't play except on a PC... Your point about raising the bitrate up from the standard 128kbps is quite valid - if I was going to burn MP3's to disc, I would consider using a rate of 192 or 256kbps to get the best possible quality. Many DVD players will also play MP3 so you could even burn them to a DVD and have hundreds and hundreds of tracks on a single disc - put them in folders and your DVD might well be able to navigate them (mine does and it is literally the cheapest DVD player you can get anywhere...)
The lossy format will slightly lower the sound quality though probably not significantly... If your CD player is not MP3 enabled then you will HAVE to use standard WAV files to burn conventional CD's. If you burn an MP3 to play in conventional CD format, you lose the quality and do not gain any recording space on the CD so there is no point...
There is no quick way to record these files, as they must be played in real-time, so this could be time-consuming....
You can get in touch with me via the website below or via Yahoo if you need any further advice...
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DA RUCKUS SAMPLER CASSETTE
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