Recording Your Old Cassettes and Records With Your Computer Part 1

So you've dusted off your old milk crate full of vinyl records , and that shoe box full of old cassette tapes to convert to your digital for your mp3 player, or CD player. This article will show you the tips tricks and pitfalls of recording your old media. Don't waste time experimenting on what will and will not work. These simple methods will have your old tunes converted and backed up in no time.

Equipment List

A basic off the shelf computer with a stock sound card and PC speakers recording software for your PC – Sound Forge, Cool Edit Pro or Audicity are popular software 1/8 inch stereo – Red and white/black RCA cable cassette deck, record player with phono preamplifier, or any old devices you are trying to record

Recording Basics

Think of recording sound like a room with a floor and a ceiling, your sound ceiling is 3 db and as far as your noise floor goes this will depend on all the factors involved in how and what your using to record with a factory installed sound card you should be able to achieve around -60 to -70db with the aid of sound dampening computer parts and better sound cards will achieve in the range of 96-120 db. This room also has depth which you could think of as the equalization high and lows on the frequency scale the highs are 20khz and the lows are 20hz. Each frequency of the recording is played at an amplitude of up to 3 db and can be heard separately this is why we can hear lyric sung and instruments played at the same time and being able to hear each individually.

Before you go running out to the store to buy the latest sound card and computer, good results can be achieved with a stock built PC.

The Set-Up

Use the 1/8 inch to RCA cable to hook up the output of your tape deck to the input of your sound card. You will also need to have at least a set of computer speakers plugged into the output of your computer. Now open your sound recording software and click the VU meters at the bottom of the window (cool edit) and you should be getting a reading of two green bars flickering showing you your noise floor around -60db to -70db is acceptable for a cheap stock sound card. If you hit play on your tape deck you be able to check your VU meters to make sure your sound input is not exceeding 3 db and causing distorted clips. If this happens lower or raise your levels so that your tape is not going to exceed about -3 db.

Recording

Now if you hit record you will be asked a few options about how you want to record check 16 bit and use 44,100 sample rate in stereo or mono. Once you hit enter this will start recording so have your tape cued and ready. Once your track has been recorded hit stop and save. There you have it, a raw audio file in .wav format that could be burned to CD and listened to on your home stereo. With all the work you have dine so far it would be a shame not to enhance your captured recording. This can be done by both noise reduction and some post equalization work.

Keep reading Recording Your Old Cassettes and Records With Your Computer Part 2