reverie

So I'm going through a ton of tapes right now, and wondering... has anyone here transferred their cassettes to digital files (and/or cd)? I've got a ton of stuff, admittingly mostly of my old band. I'd like to transfer it to better storage, and also get rid of all these tapes. Ideally they'll be archived on cd.

I thought maybe someone here would be able to help or offer suggestions. Thanks!

rw2516

I've done it many times. Mostly transferring over old cassettes from the 70s and 80s I made from King Biscuit, BBC, Westwood One, etc. I use a stand alone cd recorder that is run through your receiver. The main drawback is the tape is recorded as one long track. I have to sit and listen while doing it and press a button on the remote between songs to create a new track. With the live stuff I then rip the recorded cd to the computer with Nero to remove the gap between songs and reburn. With pre-recorded casettes the recorder can detect the gap between songs and creates seperate tracks instead of one long track. Doesn't work with vinyl though. Recorder can always detect some sound between songs and doesn't record them as seperate tracks.

Hollowgen

i use adobe audition to record my audio files directly from cassette/minidisc/dat/whatever to the computer, do the mastering (hiss reduction, pop removal) and then--

you should get CD Wave to split your one long wave file up. it's hands-down the best program for this.

UAIOE

I saw a tape drive that you can install into your computer that will do exactly what you are asking.

joeblow69

or

calhoun07

I run the output cables from my tape player into my sound card on my computer and use Nero Wave Recorder to do my transfers. The direct connection cuts out any extra hiss that I might pick up other wise, so the final product comes out sounding at least as good as the original cassette. I manage to get clean, crisp sounding files that way.

Nero records it as one long track. I just save each track individually (cut what I don't want to save, save the track, paste and repeat.)

I transfer my LP records in the same way.

atlantamoi

My vinyl rips sound so much better than that muddy sound on pre-recorded tapes. I've made a few transfers from the better sounding tape recordings I made myself, but ended up finding better transfers from online blogs over the years.

reverie

Awesome suggestions, thanks! I'll definitely be looking into some of these (as soon as I get my new computer.. which is hopefully really soon )!