Advice sought: Cassette-to-digital converter

[cyclones500]

I want to purchase an affordable device to convert cassettes to digital. Tapes I want to transfer contain home-recorded music that I obviously can’t repurchase. Device/software needs to be compatible with iMac 10.6.8.

I’ve looked at available products and read some reviews online, but I hope CF experts in this realm can steer me in the best direction. I can provide add'l detail if needed.

Any help is appreciated. PM’s welcome.

 

[Farnsworth]

If you want to do it on the cheap I'd just get a male to male audio cable and run a playing device to your mic port, and then use Audacity (free program) to capture the digitial feed.

 

[3GenClone]

If this is home recorded it sounds like you could benefit from getting a small mixer with USB interface. I got my wife a Xenyx Q802 USB mixer from guitar center for Christmas so she could record her own acoustic guitar and vocals. There's a stereo RCA input that you could connect your cassette deck to and connect the mixer to your Mac via USB and import the recordings using audacity.

 

[Pat]

I think there are less expensive options than a mixer, but, really, the most important question is how much you want to spend. I'm guessing the RCA-to-1/4 cable is probably the best bet, but you can get better fidelity as you start to introduce better components.

If you're looking to drop a couple grand on AD converters and preamps, I'm sure there are options, too.

 

[ShopTalk]

Why the audacity ---- is found here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/

Hook your cassette deck up to p.c. with audacity loaded, start the cassette, push record in audacity and wait for it to finish. When done, convert the file to mp3 or apple format, save and done.

 

[cyclones500]

Thank you for responses so far. Useful info.

Regarding Audacity and systems like Xenyx, I don't currently have a tape deck, so that's an extra consideration.

 

[cyclones500]

I think there are less expensive options than a mixer, but, really, the most important question is how much you want to spend. I'm guessing the RCA-to-1/4 cable is probably the best bet, but you can get better fidelity as you start to introduce better components.

If you're looking to drop a couple grand on AD converters and preamps, I'm sure there are options, too.

I'd like to have some control over sound quality with the transfer, but I can't budget anything too high-end, mainly because it's a dozen or fewer tapes, and I might not even use it much after converting these.
I assume if I can get them into digital format I can worry about remastering down the line.

 

[Pat]

You can definitely clean up the audio once it's in digital form (make sure you get an uncompressed format, as opposed to an MP3), but you're stuck with wow/flutter, and if there are low or high frequencies that don't make it to the digital file, you can't make them magically reappear.

I'd be lying if I said I had any idea about good cassette decks. Might be worth seeing if a local library has one you can check out (may sound like garbage), or if a local music studio would be willing to rent one. This might be your best bet, actually. Otherwise, Amazon reviews, I guess.

 

[Farnsworth]

Thank you for responses so far. Useful info.

Regarding Audacity and systems like Xenyx, I don't currently have a tape deck, so that's an extra consideration.

If you need a tape deck I'm sure I have a talk boy sitting around from the boxes my mom gave me!

We made radio stations all the time as a kid and I've been meaning to transfer them to digital so I may be doing this project as well soon.