Tape to CD?

Soldato
Joined
29 Jun 2004
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12,957
Okay, I hear you can do this, but I don't know how without specialist equipment :(

Basically, I have some old fantastic bhangra albums on tape that I WOULD LOVE on CD because you can't buy them on CD.
They're exclusive albums as well :)
The meathod I need has to be:
- Cheap
- Require no specialist equipment (apart from any I may have)
-Good quality conversion

To my disposal I have a PC, an AIWA Hi Fi and a few cables.

Any ideas?
Thanks :)
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
29 Jun 2004
Posts
12,957
Oh thanks. As simple as that eh?

What lead do I need for that? And will all the songs on on the tape come as seperate MP3s or as one big MP3 for side A and one big MP3 for side B?
 
Caporegime
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26 Aug 2003
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Leafy Cheshire
Dependant on your HiFi, probably a "3.5mm male jack - 3.5mm male jack" cable, but possibly a "5mm male jack - 3.5mm male jack" cable.

If you just hit "record" on the PC, and play on the tape deck, then you will get one long MP3, but there are plenty of peices of free software that will allow you to either specify times to split tracks up, or let you listen, pause, then split tracks.
 
Associate
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3 Jul 2004
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Brighton
To be honest just plugging you tape deck into the mic socket is going to result in a lot of hiss and background noise. You can do it, but the quality is going to be low.

You really need a soundcard interface with the proper inputs. I ended up buying an Audigy Platinum (mk1) when I started converting my vinyl to mp3. With the two phono jacks plugged into the Aux sockets of the Audigy I get a near perfect input. Audacity is my recording program of choice (freeware: Google it).

I know you said that you don't really want to spend any money, but with the original Audigys getting on for 6 years old there must be some cheap ones floating about. It is definitely worth it. I still buy all my music on vinyl and rip it straight to mp3 for the PC, as I know the quality is going to be as good as CD.
 
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Caporegime
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England
Crestfallen said:
To be honest just plugging you tape deck into the mic socket is going to result in a lot of hiss and background noise. You can do it, but the quality is going to be low.

Thats why he should use line in. ;)
 
Associate
Joined
19 Mar 2003
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1,364
I did this a couple of years ago, spent many long hours transferring tapes and records! Another thumbs up for Audacity from me, it's free and simple, I connected it via my onboard sound (which is pretty decent actually, nForce sound chip, can't remember what it's called but gave me a very clear signal). It takes a looooong time to do em tho, was about 90 mins recording + 5 mins noise reduction (slow computer) + 15 mins setting up tracks and recording the cd! Try and get a good volume level, you want it so that there's no clipping on the loud bits (where the waves go larger than limit on the sound prog, the top of the wave is just cut off and you get a drop in quality and can cause other problems if it's too loud).
 
Associate
Joined
6 Dec 2005
Posts
787
I use CDWAVE which automatically can split the tracks. You can plug Lame into if you want to make MP3's out of them. My favorite cassettes I usually make a Audio CD from aswell.
 
Don
Joined
21 Oct 2002
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46,744
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Parts Unknown
if you're doign manuak recording rthen use audacity,.

perefcet for recording,, cna choos e the source from any scoured on soundcardx,.

had a fewe beers tonihjt, so spelelingits bad,
 
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