Bud:

As to connecting your cassette deck to your PC, the following article is excellent:

http://the-predator.tripod.com/dell/sec7-9.html#7-9-1

An 8-track player (talk about old formats!!!) will connect the same way as any other audio device.

Recording to the hard drive and noise reduction are covered here:

http://the-predator.tripod.com/dell/sec7-9.html#7-9-2

That should be enough to get you started.  If you have any other questions, come on back.

 

Nick 44   Thanks for your reply. I will look into the links you have provided. If you think that 8 track is old stuff. ,you need to see my collection of 78's, 33's, and 45  records, or my many reels of tape music on reel to reel recorder. Buddee

Hi,

    I've done this (old C-60 cassettes to CD routine) already. It's not hard, it's just "a piece of work".

    Here are the essentials:

i)   **decent** stereo cassette player with audio out -- preferably a headphone female jack.
ii)  stereo audio cable ...male at both ends.  (one end to the audio card of your 'puter !)
iii) LOTS of hard disk space!
iv) "Music" (i.e. wave file) "clean-up" software (otherwise the music you transfer onto your CDs will sound equally as bad as those rat-bag cassettes you just dug up from the boxes in the basement!)

Methodology:

1) Using e.g. 'creative recorder' ...on your XP system, run a couple of tests to sort out the signal strength level (i.e. the appropriate VOLUME of your cassette player). Believe me, it doesn't take much of a volume for you to BLOW (i.e. distort) the sound. It will surprise you how LITTLE volume you need !

(If you're not hearing anything thru' the speakers of your 'puter, make sure you have the jack plug in the correct slot in your audio card AND the creative recorder set to "line in" or "audio in" or 'mic' and that you DON'T have either option 'muted' in your audio-hq panel !!!)  <---- often overlooked!   (BTW, don't EVER play a cassette and record the sound by putting the mic close to the speaker ...that method is for dweebs! ...coz you don't also want the sound of your doggie barking in the background and/or the children screaming too ....right?) 

2) It's better to err on the volume/recording level combination that produces 99% "GREEN" peak levels with only the odd, very infrequent "RED" peak level. Too many REDS will result in distorted sound! You have been warned!

3) Don't be 'cheap' with the (recording) to disk space. By that I mean don't try and "exactly time" the pressing of the 'play button' (on the cassette player) with the pressing of the OK/record button on your computer, coz you can always, once you have the sound file on disk, "trim" the excess off either end, using, e.g. WaveStudio.

4) Suggest you record a whole C-60 side in one fell swoop, and THEN, once you have the humungo .wav file ....THEN "chop it up" into the component songs.

5) I wholly recommend "Groove Mechanic" as the software you should use to remove i) clicks, ii) thumps, iii) crackles and iv) hiss from the wave files on your hard disk. Be prepared to spend a significant amount of time "cleaning up" the music files BEFORE you commit them to CD.

Having said all that, and, yes, after having spent a lot of time+effort 'turning my ancient cassettes into CD's' I can honestly say that the effort was ONLY worth it IF AND ONLY IF the music was NOT available via Kazaa. So! think and search before you begin such a project!

Just my $0.02

Gerry

Dimension 8200 (Feb '02)
Bios A09
512Mb RAM
Windows XP Home Edition + SP1
Intel P4 2.4Ghz Northwood (478 pin) CPU - 400 FSB w/512Mb Cache
ViewSonic VX900 19" LCD Flatscreen monitor (taking digital input from video card)
Chaintech 'gold' Geforce4 Special Edition GT61 Ti-4600 128Mb with NVIDIA 43.51 drivers
HP 300i DVD burner
CT4780 Creative SoundBlaster Live!
Samsung 308B 'combo' drive (CD burner/DVD player)
Western Digital 80GB "JB" (applications)
Western Digital 120GB "JB" (data)
Maxtor 80GB ("Norton Ghost Drive") - port#1 on Promise ATA-TX-133 card
Western Digital 120GB "JB" ("Norton Ghost Drive") - port#2 on Promise ATA-TX-133 card
3.5" Floppy
250Mb Internal Zip drive
Canon S9000 color printer
Canon BJ-10ex b+w printer
Olympus OM-10 slide scanner
Canon D1250U2F flat bed scanner
MS Sidewinder II joystick
56K PCI Internal Modem
Adaptec 2906 SCSI card (for Olympus slide scanner)
Ethernet Network Card - (I took it out ...no network!)
...plus the usual applications, software goodies and tools :-)

 

   

Hi Buddee:

 Something to keep in mind about 8-tracks is that very few, if any, of them incorporated any modern dynamic noise reduction techniques.  I think one producer (Columbia)  finally managed to get its whole catalog in  Dolby-B just as the format was closing out.  The others never did.

In any case,  you'll often have no DNR with this format and the tape hiss will be really bad.    Even worse than those reel-to-reel jobs because the speed was so much slower.

Have fun.

Thank you!Your article was great- The one that you dirested me to :"Fireberd" was better than I could have hoped for.