Capturing cassettes - line out and tape deck questions

[kavanagj]

Hi there,

Looking to transfer audio cassettes to wav/mp3.

My first 2 questions are around cassettes line out and plugging a tape deck into my pc.

I have various walkmans/ghette blasters/basic cheap hi fi's with headphone out. I know can connect this to PC line in.

However I have read that the headphone out is not as good for capturing cassettes as a stereo line out or RCA line out.

Is this definetly the case ?

If I have to go for stereo line out or RCA line out I will need to buy something.
Some Sony Professional recorder walkmans have stereo line out hence I could try that.
Alternatively I could buy a tape deck. However would I need to buy a tape deck will I also require speakers/amp or can I use the PC audio capabilities.

Cheers
Jim

 

[zver]

you simply cannot compare cheap walkman and tapedeck...You would achive much better quality with a tapedeck..and you should go for one(..couse they are really cheap these days)..You will use line outs of your deck...You will connect`em to your soundcard on pc..and you dont need an additional amp..Basic transfer to pc from cassete is fairly simple unless you wanna go with some advanced thingies like editing audio.For a procedure use a search funkcion as it has been covered numeorous times...
Addon;I meant recomending to buy a td in case youre planning to do a few conversions or if the quality matters
Also check this link http://www.delback.co.uk/lp-cdr.htm
Its initially made for lp-pc but lots of stuff aplly here too
Have a fun and good luck.

 

[VIPER_1069]

as ZVER SAID

if you have access to a sony with LINE out then i suggest you try that as a cheap alternative as SONY are a good make of equipment

but as zver said you are better off with a HI FI system with LINE out as this will have a far better quality LINE out

depends if you are a QUALITY nut like ZVER

or want something thats quick easy and prolly fine for general use

 

[LTR12101B]

Some stereo radio cassettes (ghetto-blaster style, not walkman style) have a DIN socket for external connection - not sure if it's for IN, OUT or BOTH.
While not as good as seperates system deck with proper line-out, it's probably better than headphone out.

If you MUST use headphone out, turn off features like "hyper-bass" and set tone controls flat.

If you connect a tape deck (or a record deck with bult-in or accessory phono pre-amplifier) to the soundcard line in, you can record to the PC, play through to speakers, or do both at once - it all depends on the mixer setting you use, as the playback/through and record settings do not need to be the same (but if your recording software is going to give you it's own playthrough, do NOT set the input to play in the soundcard mixer, or the recording software's playthrough will sound like an echo).

You can also connect the soundcard line-out to the tapedeck line-in if you wish to record an edited performance back to cassette.

 

[kavanagj]

Thanks

Thanks guys,
Now convinced to forget about headphone line out.

I'm considering buying a tape deck (did'nt want to have to buy amp and speakers as well.) but first going to borrow a sony recorder walkman that has line out. This will be a convenient way of getting started and getting a feel for the set up and tasks I'll need to perform

All the best
Jim