How can I digitalise my old audio tapes in an easy manner?

Question

How can I digitalise my old audio tapes in an easy manner?

Answer 1

Well it depends on how much you want to spend. One way is to buy the PlusDeck2 which costs $140. It is a Cassette drive that fits into any open bay in your PC and will convert all your old tapes into a media file of your preference (WMA, MP3, etc.).



Or, if you are little more technically inclined you can do this with some free software and connect a tape player through the line-in on your sound card. To do this, you will need a free audio editing program such as Audacity (version 1.2.4 stable or 1.3 Beta), I like the beta version. Once you have that you will select your sound card by going to edit > preferences and selecting your record source as your sound card. Once you have done that click "OK" and go to the only drop down box in the main program. From that you can either select "Line-In" or "What U Hear", both should achieve similar results. Press play on the cassette player and begin recording. Once you have what you wanted you can stop recording and use Audacity to edit the file. If you want to export it as a MP3 file you will need the LAME MP3 encoder associated with Audacity, see source links for more information.



Using the PlusDeck2 is probably easier but using Audacity is free, it just depends on if you are willing to spend the money or not.