I would like some advice for using Audacity to save some old cassettes to mp3 format. I know how to export from Audacity in mp3 format, but I'm wondering what sort of cord I will need for connecting a cassette player to my computer, and how it should be connected--through the mike input? Or other audio input? And what my settings should be on Audacity for saving music?
Any help appreciated.
Ben
Saving Old Media
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Peter Why
- Posts: 5834
- Joined: November 24th, 2005, 3:54 am
- Location: Chigwell (North-East London, U.K.)
If your computer has a soundcard or on-board sound-chip, you'll want a lead from the earphone-socket on your cassette player to the line-in socket on your sound card (with probably a 3 mm stereo male plug at each end, but you need to have a look at what you're connecting to at each end).
If your cassette player is not a portable one, you'll connect from the two output sockets from the unit which normally go to the amplifier. In this case, you'll need a dual lead that has male mono plugs at each end, plus a connector (a "T-connector", I think it's called) which has two mono sockets at one side and a stereo plug at the other .. to bring them together and plug into the line-in of your soundcard.
Remember to change your input to Line In, both in Windows Settings/Control_Panel/Sounds_and_Audio_Devices and in Audacity.
You might want to look at Polderbits recording software on www.polderbits.com instead of Audacity. You can download for a two week trial. It's very useful for creating mp3's from recorded music, and makes it easy to play with adjusting boundaries between tracks. Registered version costs about 30 euros, but the trial version is the clean, complete program.
Peter
If your cassette player is not a portable one, you'll connect from the two output sockets from the unit which normally go to the amplifier. In this case, you'll need a dual lead that has male mono plugs at each end, plus a connector (a "T-connector", I think it's called) which has two mono sockets at one side and a stereo plug at the other .. to bring them together and plug into the line-in of your soundcard.
Remember to change your input to Line In, both in Windows Settings/Control_Panel/Sounds_and_Audio_Devices and in Audacity.
You might want to look at Polderbits recording software on www.polderbits.com instead of Audacity. You can download for a two week trial. It's very useful for creating mp3's from recorded music, and makes it easy to play with adjusting boundaries between tracks. Registered version costs about 30 euros, but the trial version is the clean, complete program.
Peter
Last edited by Peter Why on June 7th, 2006, 7:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
"I think, therefore I am, I think." Solomon Cohen, in Terry Pratchett's Dodger
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Sethwoodworth
- Posts: 80
- Joined: January 23rd, 2006, 10:45 pm
- Location: Cambridge, MA
No, use audacity, but what you're going to need is a mp3 encoder. It;s free and open source, just doesn't come with the standard audacity download
Google:: LAME, can't miss it. Then you have the ability in Audacity to 'export as mp3'
Google:: LAME, can't miss it. Then you have the ability in Audacity to 'export as mp3'
sethish.com
