Does anyone know how to do this?

[IceFire 0]

Hi all,

What I want to do is burn a cassette tape onto a CD so that I can play it in a CD player.

It is a 2 sided tape, so all I need is for the CD to be divided into 2 sections. One for each side.

Thanks

Oh and don't ban me, this has nothing to do with copying CDs of some game. This is for a cassette tape.

[Crowley 0]

You need a stereo cable going from your tape player line out to the line in on your computer. You then play the tape and record it with your computer, using one of a multitude of audio programs (many soundcards come with such software, I use the one that came with mine so unless you have an Audigy I cannot help in the aquisition of a program). With the audio program you should be able to save the file as a wav or mp3 (if mp3 go with at least 112kbps for quality, though it wont be great from a cassette in the first place). Then burn the wav or mp3 with whatever audio cd burning software you have (I assume you do have this software since you must have a cd burner already to be asking this).

You'll have saved one file for each side so burn them in order to have track one for one side of the tape and track two for the other side. You could even save individual songs then burn each song as an individual track with the audio software. Its a fairly simple process to cut out everything except the song in question and save that part. Be sure to burn them in the correct order if you do.

[Placebo 29]

Getting the cable will be really easy, if you've got a couple of pairs of old headphones, cut the headphones off and splice the wire together, put one end in your tape recorder's headphone socket, the other end into your sound card's microphone socket.

[Crowley 0]

Getting the cable will be really easy, if you've got a couple of pairs of old headphones, cut the headphones off and splice the wire together, put one end in your tape recorder's headphone socket, the other end into your sound card's microphone socket.

Not all mic plugs are stereo, though it should work.

[der bastler 0]

Nearly all modern soundcards do have at least one line-in stereo jack.

Recently I recorded one of my old LPs (The Alan Parsons Project -- Turn of a Friendly Card). It's simple:

- connect output of tape deck (usually head phones; better: line-out, if available) with input of soundcard (line-in) by using a stereo cable

- get a recording software, e.g. Audacity ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ )

- run software, start recording

- start tape playback

- at the end of side 1, stop playback, stop recording, save data, start new recording, turn tape, start playback

- after recording both sides, you should have two wav-Files (in Audacity, just "select all" and export selection to wav), which can be easily burned on a CD-Audio using your favourite burning software, e.g. Nero or K3B ( http://k3b.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/index.pl ).

[John C Flett 0]

Quote[/b] ]Recently I recorded one of my old LPs (The Alan Parsons Project -- Turn of a Friendly Card).

Good band. Good album.

I transfered a few tapes and vinyl to CD also about a year back. If you have an kind of editing software its quite easy to claen up the copies also. Think I used Wavestudio. Any clicks ( more typical of vinyl ) show up as big spikes on the graph. easy to find and cut out. Stange thing about the human ear is a click a fraction of a second long is very easy to hear. replace it with a tiny silence and nothing seems wrong. I improved the quality of some old rare Stevie Nicks tracks quite nicely that way.

And boy, am I showing my age in this thread.

[toadlife 3]

Ahhhhh vinyl! You just can't beat the sound of it. I converted over the only vinyl of mine worth saving, Alice in Chains -SAP/Jar of Flies EP.

One trick you can use to minimize crackling while recording them is to "float" each track, by swabbing a thin layer of 100% rubbing alcohol over the surface of the record. The layer of alchohol acts as a sort of lubricant and lowers the noise and frequency of crackling, while not affecting the sound, or damaging the record.

You have to do it one track at time though, as it drys too quickly.

I recorded the EP at 48000khz and archived them using Ape audio compression, which is lossless.

[Gadger 0]

Quote[/b] ]by swabbing a thin layer of 100% rubbing alcohol over the surface of the record

A friend of mine does that when mixing and copying to LP, can validate it works a treat  

[toadlife 3]

Quote[/b] ]by swabbing a thin layer of 100% rubbing alcohol over the surface of the record

A friend of mine does that when mixing and copying to LP, can validate it works a treat

Yeah it's an old radio DJ trick. My Dad was a DJ back in the 70's when they played vinyl. It was used to squeeze a few more plays out of a record.

[IceFire 0]

Ok, that's all good info.

First off, I looked at the back of my comp. I didn't see a "Line 1" hole. I did see a square hole labeled "Line" that looked as if it was shaped for a telephone or modem plug.

There is also 3 colored round holes. One is used for my headphones, the other is used for my mic when I want to talk over TeamSpeak, and I don't know what the last one in the row is. Maybe that one is it, I don't know.

My computer is a Compaq Presario 7006 US470014-517

Intel[R] Pentium[R] 4 CPU 1700MHz

640MB RAM

Direct X 9.0b

I think my sound card is a Creative Sound Blaster AudioPCI 128 (WDM)

I don't know about any recording software. I do have Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.

It came with my computer. It allows me to save files onto CDs. I don't know if something like that would work.

As for the sterio cable, can I buy that at a store?

As for burning CDs. I don't know if my comp has that capability. But I can save things like songs and such onto CDs I think. Maybe that's it.

[Frisbee 0]

Quote[/b] ]First off, I looked at the back of my comp. I didn't see a "Line 1" hole. I did see a square hole labeled "Line" that looked as if it was shaped for a telephone or modem plug.

There is also 3 colored round holes. One is used for my headphones, the other is used for my mic when I want to talk over TeamSpeak, and I don't know what the last one in the row is. Maybe that one is it, I don't know.

Line in,on your soundcard (you could have figured that sound is handled by your soundcard),it's probably blue.

You should be able to get a cable like that at a store,usually it's for connecting portable devices to an amp.

Ask for a 3.5 jack to a white/red tulip connection (is tulip the correct english term?)

Just get the recorded software and follow the steps already layed out.

Oh,and burning on cd = recording on cd

(thus called because the laser burns holes in the cd to record the data)

[IceFire 0]

Ok, it turns out I can't yet record things onto CD's. I used the CD creator to save some song files onto a CD. Then I put the CD in a CD player, nothing played.

Tryed to play it on Media player on my comp. I had to actually open the files to play them. Not like normal song tracks.

[IceFire 0]

I guess I could save the WAV or MP3 files once they are recorded using the Audacity recording software onto a CD.

I think my roomate has CD burning capabilities. He could then maybe burn them onto another CD?

Then I will be able to play them in my car, hopefully.

[Gadger 0]

Most stereo systems dont support CD/RW, make sure ya got CD/R discs or that your car stereo supports CD/RW.

[Frisbee 0]

I guess I could save the WAV or MP3 files once they are recorded using the Audacity recording software onto a CD.

I think my roomate has CD burning capabilities.  He could then maybe burn them onto another CD?

Then I will be able to play them in my car, hopefully.

Meh?  

A stereo can't play mp3 or wmp files,they wouldn't be selling mp3 players if they could.

WAV is normal audio,mp3,wmp,ogg,all are compressed formats,thus they need decoders to play.

A comp has these decoders,and an mp3 player has a decoding chip,capable of decoding one or more formats,a stereo does not,all it plays is normal audio (=WAV)

So,what you want to do is :

- record it with audio software,save it as wav (to burn it) or as mp3/ogg/wmp (to listen to it on your comp)

- burn the WAV on cd using your burning software.

[IceFire 0]

I want the CD to be like a normal music CD you buy at the record store. Just pop it into a CD player or entertainment center under your TV or like in your car. I guess that's all WAV?

Is wav better quality than MP3?

[Frisbee 0]

WAV burnt on cd will behave exactly like a normal audio cd,eg: it should play in al;ost every 'normal' cd player.

Small explanation,if interested.

WAV is,uncompressed,so in theory it's near perfect quality.

But the filesize is huge,for argument's sake,10mb per minute.

So,it's interesting to compress the sound if you want to save space on your harddisk,so you use,for example mp3 to compress it.

A 3 min WAV (=30mb,see above) will be compressed to a 3mb,128kbs mp3 (most people can't hear the difference between this and cd quality,unless they have a good audio set/pair of ears)

Your WAV will be as good as your source (=tape),with some tiny,almost unnoticeable loss from the transfer (tape deck,cable,soundcard).

Then if you burn it on cd it will sound the same.

[IceFire 0]

Most stereo systems dont support CD/RW, make sure ya got CD/R discs or that your car stereo supports CD/RW.

What is this supposed to mean? Wait, so I need to buy a different CD?

I want it to be just like any ordinary music CD. What do I need?

[Balschoiw 0]

No in most of the cases regular CD´s do work. Only make sure you "finnish" the CD by closing the session. You can´t alter the CD afterwards anymore but that´s not necesarry if you just want a permanent copy of the cd.

So it goes like this:

Use a recording software to record the input signal from the Line In port. Setting should be 44khz 16bit Stereo, wave format.

Then take the two files (side 1 , side 2) maybe refresh them within an editing Software like Soundforge to normalize peak, etc and then take the wave files you created and take them to Nero or the burning program you are using. Create an Audio CD (menu selection) drop in your two tracks and there you go.

[Placebo 29]

IceFire if you don't know 8 months later you're never going to know