Copying
music from tapes is a bit trickier than ripping straight from CDs
because some extra hardware is required. There are probably more
technological (and expensive!) ways to do this that will preserve
the music at a higher quality, but doing it this way will preserve
it at about radio quality. Copying from a tape will never be as
good as CD quality anyway because the media itself is not as good.
Hardware
needed:
· A computer: Windows 95 at least, XP recommended; no guarantees
if you have a Mac or Linux computer, although there should be software
available for those systems now as well
· A tape player: any kind, as long as it has a headphone
jack
· A cable that can plug into a headphone port on both ends:
a male-male 1/4'' cable which can be bought for a few dollars
Software
needed:
· A music file conversion program such as dbPowerAMP or BladeEnc
· A wave recording program: many music players bundled with
Windows can record, as well as many downloadable programs.
· A music editing program such as WavePad (somewhat optional)
Steps
1. Connect the cable to the headphone port on the tape player and
the microphone port on the computer.
2. Place the tape you wish to copy into the tape player and advance
it to the song you want.
3. Open the wave recording program. Make sure that it is set up
to record from the microphone jack and that the microphone is not
muted.
4. Simultaneously press play on the tape player and record in the
recording program. Wait until the song is over, and then stop recording
before stopping the tape player.
5. (Somewhat optional) Edit the recorded wave file in the editing
program to remove any excess leading and ending silence, or to remove
any overall hiss. Because the connection through the microphone
jack is not the best sort of connection, there is often a bit of
background hiss that can be greatly reduced by using a filter in
the editing program.
6. Once you have the final form of the wave file, use the conversion
program to convert the wave to an mp3.
7. Repeat steps 2 to 6 for each song you want.
Many
editing programs can edit either wave or mp3 files, so if hard drive
space is an issue, it is possible to switch steps 5 and 6 and perform
the editing on the mp3. Keep in mind, however, that mp3 is a "lossy"
format, which means that you will get better results by editing
the original uncompressed wave file and then converting rather than
converting first and then editing.
Make
sure that you have plenty of fresh batteries on hand, or use a tape
player that can be plugged in. Tape players do tend to slow down
when their batteries run low, and that severely affects the output
sound. It may take a few tries per song to get a recording you like,
and this can eat up battery power fairly quickly. -Reko
Yukawa
