How to Convert Audio Cassettes to Digital Formats

by Joey Williams Consultant

Cassettes were necessary for playing the music back in the days. If you used to own a Sony Walkman and listen to music through cassette tapes, you must be familiar with their importance. There might be chances that you still have those cassette tapes consisting of mixtapes, albums, and demos of your favorite old band. All those music or bootlegs of concerts might not be available on streaming services such as Spotify and more today. But you choose to convert those analog cassettes into digital formats and listen to them on various devices.

How to transfer cassette tapes into the computer?

For converting cassettes to mp3, you need to have an audio software like Audacity, cables, PC, and obviously a tape player. The old Walkman can be perfect in this case. Once you manage the tape player, check your PC and tape player to know the type of cables you will need. Your PC will require an analog audio input like a line-in or microphone jack. Connect your tape player through a market Line In port easily.

Just in case, if you can’t manage a working tape player, then you need to find one with a USB output to send audio to your computer. It will remove the need for Line In from your desktop computer.

Dansrue Super USB Cassette Capture and Toner Portable Cassette Player Tape Converter are destined to help you in the conversion process. They might not be the best solution for the audiophiles, though. But if you wish to salvage old cassettes only, then they will help you for sure.

You need to know that the quality of audio in cassettes was never that great. So, you can’t expect the audio quality that you listen now on Spotify or YouTube, even after converting to MP3 format. Few modern tape players include conversion software, but Audacity will work fine for you as well.

How to convert cassette tapes using Audacity?

Firstly, connect the cassette player with your computer through USB or the Line Input. Then, hit the start button and look out for Control Panel. Go to the Sound section through Hardware & Sound. Choose the Recording tab and make sure that you see the Line In option with ‘Plugged in.’ If you are using the USB player, ensure that the same is listed and connected too. You need to download and install the right drive to run if you can’t see the connected device over there.

Once connected, open Audacity, go to the top section. From there, click on Edit, then Preferences, and then Devices. Go to the Interface section from the main panel, and select MME from the drop-down menu. And, make sure that 2 (Stereo) is selected in the Channels field, and the particular player has been chosen in the Device field.

You can now set the ideal levels to record. For that, play the tape and ensure that the two green bars on the top don’t turn red. After you are satisfied with the audio level, you can start recording by clicking the record option on Audacity and playing the cassette again. Turn the side of the tape and resume when one side is recorded.

You will see a long recorded track on Audacity, which you can break in parts if you want. Once done with all the editing, go to File and then choose ‘Export Multiple’ option. Select the desired format and hit the Export button to get the final file.

In this way, you can easily convert cassettes into digital formats!

Joey Williams is a self-professed security expert; he has been making the people aware of the security threats. His passion is to write about Cybersecurity, cryptography, malware, social engineering, internet and new media. He writes for Norton security products at norton.com/setup.

Source : Convert Audio Cassettes to Digital Formats