Copying cassettes to laptop - Alternative programs to Audacity

[Speedo1968]

Has anyone tried copying cassettes to their computer ?

How easy is Audacity ?

[KittenKong]

Audacity is very good and not hard to learn the basics of, at least.

No reason why it should not be used for copying cassettes. You just need a cassette player (cant remember the last time I saw one of those, and the audio quality is grim) and a suitable lead. Your laptop will surely have a line-in audio connection.

I suggest that you make an initial recording in the highest quality format (FLAC would be good) and then later you can experiment with things like hiss reduction which Audacity does quite well. But always keep the original recording.

[Crossy]

2 hours ago, KittenKong said:

FLAC would be good

Yes! FLAC is lossless (Free Lossless Audio Codec).

 

Record in the highest bitrate your audio card supports, get everything that's on the tape, warts and all. Then start post-processing to remove the warts without losing too much content.

 

Task A. Find a decent cassette deck / player.

[Speedo1968]

18 hours ago, KittenKong said:

Audacity is very good and not hard to learn the basics of, at least.

No reason why it should not be used for copying cassettes. You just need a cassette player (cant remember the last time I saw one of those, and the audio quality is grim) and a suitable lead. Your laptop will surely have a line-in audio connection.

I suggest that you make an initial recording in the highest quality format (FLAC would be good) and then later you can experiment with things like hiss reduction which Audacity does quite well. But always keep the original recording.

Many thanks for the reply.   Will give Audacity a try.

Some of the cassettes go back to when I lived in South America in the 1970's.

I also lived in Saudi and Kuwait during the 1980's - 90's where cassettes were really cheap.

My collection ( 500+ tapes ) I left to my daughters in the UK, I only brought about 100 here to Thailand, mainly originals and time is running out to save them.

[Speedo1968]

16 hours ago, Crossy said:

Yes! FLAC is lossless (Free Lossless Audio Codec).

 

Record in the highest bitrate your audio card supports, get everything that's on the tape, warts and all. Then start post-processing to remove the warts without losing too much content.

 

Task A. Find a decent cassette deck / player.

Thanks for the reply.

Fortunately I have a good quality player.    Will read up about FLAC.

[tifino]

Agree on Audacity; 

I use it to transfer audio content, to minidisc for editing, and

if set up correctly it's good for Broadcast Quality audio transmission,

so with Cassette use it's a pert damn overkill, of the good kind 

[Get Real]

https://beebom.com/best-audio-editing-software/