Audio Recording

One of the most popular early form of recording medium is using cassette tapes, this is an old /classic way of storing audio. I could still remember in the 80′s when cassette tapes are entirely sold in the market for commercial albums but now it is obsolete.

But what about you have bought classic albums in cassette tapes before and you want to preserved its quality eternally by converting it to a digital recording? So that anytime you can just burn it to a CD using your personal computer. Or say you have recorded some interview using a cassette recorder, and you would need to store it in your hard drive?

Credits: Malcolm Tyrrell

So how you are going to convert cassette tapes to Digital recordings? It all depends entirely on how your computer has been configured to accept sound. Let’s discuss the details:

Step 1: The most important requirement is to have a microphone/line in jack in your personal computer or laptop. This is coloured orange as opposed to speakers which is coloured green. So you have to look for microphone/line in jack. If you do not have microphone/line in jack. Then you might as well use your web cam microphone/line in input. Sounds awkward (not recommended for quality recording, only for voice recording purposes) but it is possible for you to play the cassette recorder right in front of a web cam microphone input. Just make the environment quite. If you do not have a web cam with microphone/line in input. Then maybe your need to buy either a sound card.(all PC nowadays should have built in microphone)

Step 2: Assuming you have microphone/line in jack installed. The next you need are PC audio cables. Look for 1/8 inch jack male plug in both ends (screen shot below).

Step 3: Connect one end of the 1/8 inch jack to your cassette player headphone output and connect the other end to your sound card microphone/line in input. Do not yet record.

Credits: www.frontx.com

Step 4: Once it is well connected. You need to configure Windows software for recording. If you are using Windows which is a majority. You can go to Start — Programs — Accessories – Entertainment and select “Sound Recorder”. The default recording waveform is WAV which consumes a lot of hard disk space however it is recommended for quality recordings. But you can convert WAV to MP3 using a recording software.

Step 5. Do some little testing before recording the real thing. In this case, hit the play button in your cassette and make sure there is outputted sound. And then hit the RECORD button in the sound recorder. Check if you see some bumps in the green line, if you see it then it is recording. Using your Windows sound mixer, you can adjust the level of recording under microphone or line in, to make sure you can recording under normal volume and avoid recording it too loud because it can clip/distort your recordings.

Step 6. If you are finally sure with the settings, go ahead and start the recording process. Experiment a lot in the configuration, you can even use an audio recording software to do it. Like audacity, which is free. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Check the quality of your recording, and if you are not satisfied tweak the microphone/line in volume control/ or even cable adjustment until there are no noises or distortions present.

What determines the quality of your cassette to digital recordings:

1. The quality of your cassette tape recording– If it is already bad or distorted, it is extremely hard or looks impossible to fix it in digital(using computer).
2. The quality of your sound card– if you are using built in sound card (from motherboard). Then it might be noisy.
3. The quality of your audio cables– if you using loose cables, it might be noisy or experiences some drop off in sound.
4. Your system memory– if your computer is too slow, it might drop off a bit.
5. Recording software can play a role, you have more flexibility using a standard audio recording software than using Windows based recorder (like for removing noises).