If you want to digitize an old cassette, necessary setup is explained here. You can use this method to revive your old heritage which you recorded using Tape Recorder. It is a good decision to take this step as old technologies are getting obsolete. And sooner or later, these technologies will become entirely the part of museum. Lets start to computerize our precious stuff today.
1- All you require is Line-In cable, a good cassette player and computer. Line-In cable is easily available in market. See the images for more idea about what it looks like.
2- After you get this cable. All you have to do next is to connect one jack of this cable to tape recorder or cassette player (walkman) which ever you have. The other part of this cable will go into ”Line-In” audio port of computer. In laptops, usually microphone and line-in has single port for two purposes. In that case, you have to make necessary settings from Audio Control Panel or Audio Manager which is provided by the manufacturer to make that port act in ‘line-in’ mode.
3- As a reference, we are performing a recording session to show you how to do this by yourself. We are using RealTek HD Audio Codec (ALC883 / ALC 662) and Nero Wave Editor. You can use any other good software as well
4- First, we are doing some necessary settings from ‘RealTek HD Audio Manager’. These settings can be different for you. See the images to have some general idea.
We chose 30 dB as it suited our setup for best quality recording. In your case, it can be different depending upon audio codec and output signals from cassette player. Choose, DVD format (16 bits, 48,000 Hz) for recording with best quality. ‘0’ which you are seeing in image represent perfect balance between right and left speakers. It is recommended to keep ‘play back volume’ off. But you can enable it as well.
5- Now, with the help of Nero Wave Editor, we are going to digitalise cassette. See images for an idea about necessary settings which we made to record through this software.
In our scenario, we chose 48,000 Hz as Sample Rate and 16-bit as Bit depth from this software. We kept input level at 30 dB because we set the volume of cassette player to maximum.
6- After these necessary settings, your setup is ready and now, you can continue with your recording session. After recording, you can apply different effects. Choose popular MP3 format to save your recording.
If you have queries or encounter some difficulty, feel free to ask in comments section below.