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Converting cassette tapes to MP3

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I recently purchased an interesting product called PlusDeck2 which is essentially cassette deck that you install in the PC, connect to the sound card and COM port. It comes with software that automates conversion process by controlling deck via the COM port and digitizing tape output using existing sound card.

Who needs to convert tapes? Well, I do :-). For example, my daughter loves to listen to Russian fairly tales and many of them are only available on tapes. However, my Prius does not have tape deck so I really need a CD, preferably MP3 or WMA so I can fit tons of stories on a single disk and keep her entertained (and myself not bored listening to the same story over and over again). My daughter also likes to listen to stories and music at home and we don't have tape deck there either. All audio titles are sitting either on CDs or on my music machine.

PlusDeck is a good piece of hardware, I installed the deck in 5 minutes and after tinkering for about 20 minutes with the sound recording levels was able to begin conversion. The software lacks recording level meter so usually you end up oveloading the sound card. I ended up keeping line input level at about 10-20%. The other issue is that you probably want to get at least simple sound editor to get rid of tape noise and trim recorded file into separate titles. The accompanying software seems to be capable of splitting recording into separate songs or parts, but some reviews mentioned that it was not very precise so I decided to record each side into a separate WAV file and then split it into pieces myself. Manual suffers from poor translation but you probably only need to look at the connection diagrams, everything else is pretty much self explanatory.

Sure, if you already own a tape deck, you can simply connect it to the sound card and use your favorite recording software. But it you don't own one and/or like the automatic process, PlusDeck will help. It also can convert tape directly to MP3.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2005
    Normal speed :-)
  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2005
    Looks good. But there are plenty of software solutions out there that does the job very well, though not all are automated.

    I recently purchase Huelix Audio Recorder (http://www.huelix.com/audiorecorder), for this purpose. The compression options (MP3/WMA/OGG) are excellent compared to a few others I looked at.

    Wonder whether there are any that convert at faster rate, though (equivalent to fast dubbing).
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2005
    does anyone know good (free) software to convert tapes to mp3 by using the sound card?
  • Anonymous
    January 27, 2006
    try www.nch.com.au, this has some glitches but records nicely from cassettes to mp3
  • Anonymous
    October 25, 2007
    Audacity is Free. I good. Check it out