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Far more than simply an exercise in reclaiming my rather large tape collection (circa 1985), using Audacity to cut and clean your favorite yet no longer relevant 80s tunes (the majority of my collection) is an excellent exercise in learning the core features of what an enormously versatile and powerful tool Audacity can be for both personal and professional interests.

• Super USB Cassette Capture Convert Tapes to CD-MP3 from GearBestProduct link: Features:Rediscover your old cassette tapes on the go.
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• It seems pointless to make a video about cassette tapes one week before it turns 2018. But I feel it's worth it to document a bit of history.

While hugely popular with the social media community for both its continually expanding professional features and its open source philosophy of development, this cross-platform digital audio editor allows for some fairly complex work using its multi-track editing capabilities and over 100+ pluginable filters and effects. It is, suffice it to say, more than ample for our needs.

Installation and Setup

So what are we going to need? The answer to this is partly why I have been getting more and more questions about converting their cassettes to digital format. Functional cassette decks are becoming increasingly hard to find not only because optical media (CDs, DVDs, and BDs) have completely replaced their popular use but also because it seems that mechanical playback devices are witnessing a decline as portable digital audio players (iPods and many newer mobile phones) are becoming increasing ubiquitous. The upshot is if you want to salvage some or all of your collection, the sooner, the better.

The Gear

Typical Front Loading Cassette Deck: Preferably one with auto-reverse

Software

While installing Audacity is trivial, some get intimidated adding support for MP3 export (saving). Audacity uses LAME‘s MP3 encoder to handle this and for relatively obscure legal reasons cannot bundle it into its installation package. However, let’s make it as simple as possible1

1. Download Audacity from their download page. As of this writing they are currently offering a stable (1.2) and beta version (1.3). This article is going to use the beta in that I prefer some of its newer features and have yet to have a problem with its functionality
2. Install it with all of its defaults unless you have an opinion otherwise.
3. Launch the app and follow the resulting dialog boxes (mainly asking your preferred language)
4. From the Menu Bar select: Edit > Preferences > Import/Export
5. In the section MP3 Export Library click on Download for the LAME MP3 Library, select the appropriate download based on your operating system
6. Open the ZIP archive and copy and paste the lame_enc.dll to your Program FilesAudacityPlug-Ins folder
7. Return now to your Audacity Import/Export settings and select Find Library under MP3 Export Library and browse back to Program FilesAudacityPlug-Ins
   and select lame_enc.dll. Close out the dialogs with OK and that’s it.

Not really that bad. You are now ready to begin.

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Setup and Import

Connect Cassette Deck to your Computer

Go ahead and use your 3.5mm stereo TRS miniture cable to connect your cassette deck headphone jack (you’ll likely need the 6.3mm stereo TRS adapter) to your computer’s sound card’s line-in (typically color coded blue).

Next you’ll want to be certain that Audacity is listening to this input source:
Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O > Recording > Device : Select Line-in from the drop-down menu and check that it is listening for 2 channels (stereo).
While you’re here, bump on down to the Quality section and check that your Default Sample Rate is at 44100 Hz at 16 bits. This is the standard sample rate and bit rate for an audio CD. Since our source material has far less quality, there is no sense going any higher nor would I advise going any lower.

Test that everything is working correctly. Play any old tape and press the Record button in Audacity. You should see a waveform scroll across the screen as Audacity captures the guilty pleasures of your youth.

Adjust for a Healthy Waveform

What we are looking for is a happy median where we are picking up enough of the softer elements of the song without pushing the louder elements over the maximum signal level that Audacity is able to capture, known as clipping.

Healthy Waveform: Louder elements of the recording do not exceed your maximum signal level

The best way I’ve found to do this is to find a song that has a dramatic change from a peaceful soundscape to one that far more intense2. We’ll need to adjust both Audacity’s gain and the volume on the input source (our cassette deck) to be certain that we are getting a healthy waveform. What I did was set my Microphone level in the Mixer Toolbar to 0.2 and then adjusted my cassette deck’s volume till I was happy.

While this is a frustrating and potentially confusing process, keep in mind that this isn’t exactly a science. There is a fairly large margin of error given that many portable audio device managers have built-in normalization routines that will correct for most needs. I would recommend, however, that you run through this entire article with one or two songs and play them alongside MP3s that you’ve purchased to be certain they sound adequate3.

Once you’re feeling confident, then you’re over the worst of it. The rest of the process is largely procedural. Go ahead and capture the entire tape.4 Come back here when finished.

Noise Removal

One thing you’re bound to notice listening to your tape tracks alongside something ripped directly from a CD is the inevitable ticks and grit inherit to any audio technology that requires actual physical contact with its media. If you’ve taken care of your tapes, likely it will not be that bad but, we are going to make it better nonetheless.

Audacity comes with a noise removal ‘effect’ right out of the box, so to speak. But before we use it, we need a clean sample of the noise inherent to the tape itself and any line noise that may exist. Thankfully, audio cassettes offer these between every song … but, we only need one. Select a just a few seconds from your complete master track, then Effect > Utility > Noise Removal > Noise Removal : Get Noise Profile under Step 1 of the Noise Removal dialog box. Now Audacity knows what to look for.

Select Silence: Gives Audacity a specimen of the noise that you want to have eliminated from the entire tape.

Now select the entire track and return once more to the noise removal effect dialog box. As you can see, this could get pretty complex if we knew what we were doing. Go ahead and experiment a bit with the settings but I recommend using the default settings unless you have a better opinion.5

Noise Removal Dialog: The default settings seem to work fine for me

Cutting and Export

Splitting the Source Track

Now that we’ve got our source track, it is now time for some manual labor. Play with your zoom tools to get a sense of the landscape of your source track. At anytime, go back to normal using View > Zoom Normal or Ctrl + 2. 6

Once you’re comfortable that you are able to see all the necessary detail for your track, place your cursor just in front of your first song. Use your keyboards forward and back arrows to make any adjustments. Now use your vertical scroll bar to move forward through your source track till you see the next song gap. This time hold down your Shift key and click your cursor down at the end of the song.7

Track Selection: Make certain that you don't cut off fainter elements

Finally, were going to split our selection into a new track using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + I. You’ll see a new track appear below. Repeat this process throughout the length of the source track. When you’re finished, your source track should only contain the remnants between the songs and whatever got recorded before the first song and after the last. Go ahead and delete this track by closing it. You should now have as many tracks as songs that are listed on the cassette case.

Tagging, and Export

Before we save these as individual MP3s, we need to name our tracks. In each of the track’s control areas (the left of the track) pop down the menu and select Name… Type in the song title here for each of the tracks.

Naming a track: This will be used later when we export to MP3

Almost done. Modern music files, like any other digital file, has additional data surrounding it called metadata (data about data). Common metadata for most files includes author, creation date, modification date, etc. Music files, obvious have a lot more information associated with them: artist, album, genre, release date, etc. Digital music managers like iTunes and Winamp rely on these tags to properly categorize your music files. Before we attempt to export our files, we need to enter the basic details about this album so that our MP3s will play nice with your music manager.

Open Audacity Metadata Editor (File > Open Metadata Editor…) and complete the sections for Artist Name, Album Title, Year, and Genre. I also like to place a comment, “Digitized from analog cassette.” so that I can later seek out these files (for what reason, I don’t know).

Metadata Editor: Fill in only the information that is consistent for the entire album

At last, we are ready to export: File > Export Multiple… In the resulting dialog box change your export format to MP3 files, select a location to deposit your new MP3s, split files based on Tracks, and name files Using Label/Track Name. Finally, Export.

Export Multiple Dialog: Here I am exporting to a server on my network. Choose a folder that is handy for your needs.

You’ll now be confronted with a series of Metadata Editor dialog boxes confirming the Track Title and Track Number fields, press OK for each and let Audacity get to work.

Additional Considerations

Tagging

Programs such as MusicBrainz‘s Picard, Jaikoz, and MusicIP‘s MusicDNS take what amounts to an audio fingerprint of each of our files and attempts to match it against their database allowing you to not only supplement your existing metadata but also correct typos, genre choices, and refine release dates down to the month if not the day. They also add unique IDs that allow your music database to be correlated with larger databases allowing for some interesting applications to work on top of your collection.

Live Albums

Live albums tend not to have those handy gaps between songs and are usually filled with applause. My advise is to begin cutting each song from the end of the song and doing your Shift + Cursor Select at the beginning of the song. Additionally, since it is likely that you’ll be playing these songs apart from the album, those cuts in and out of the applause are going to be rather jolting. Use the Effect > Utility > Mixer > Cross Fade In/Out effects to soften these entrances and exits to songs. It makes for a little more work upfront but it definitely worth the time.

Further Reading

1. Audacity Team: Transferring tapes and records to computer or CD
2. Lifehacker: How to digitize cassette tapes

1. For the purposes of this article I’ll assume the reader is a Window’s user, which I expect to be the majority of readers. Note, however that Audacity has detailed instructions that will guide you through installation for all platforms and versions. [↩]
2. There is also a normalization plug-in available for Audacity though I have yet to experiment with it. I’d be interested in other’s experience with this feature [↩]
3. Of course, they will never sound as good. But then, if you were a true audiophile, you would not even be reading this article [↩]
4. If you have auto-reverse on your deck, all the better, otherwise, keep an eye on playback so that you can flip when need be. Also, don’t be afraid to fast forward past lame songs if you’ve got AMS functionality on your deck. [↩]
5. If you do wish to tweak these settings, be certain you are using circumaural headphones in a quite setting so you can truly hear the noise. [↩]
6. Usually I zoom out a couple of times before I start cutting to improve the speed at which I’m able to scroll but be careful that you don’t zoom out so far that you can’t see faint audio elements that sometime precede or follow a song. [↩]
7. Note that when cutting a live/concert cassette, it is better to find the end first and vertically scroll to the beginning of the song. [↩]

Tags: Audacity, Media Conversion

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1. Roxio Easy LP to MP3 | LP and Cassette to CD or MP3 Audio Converter [PC Disc]

• Preserve your favorite music by cleaning up and converting audio from analog sources to digital formats
• Record or capture audio directly from LPs, cassettes, Internet radio, and more Remove clicks, pops, hissing and other unwanted noises
• Automatically split and label tracks to correctly display on your digital media player Enhance your audio with special effects and a 10-channel graphic equalizer
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• Each set includes a mini jack male to RCA female stereo adapter, 15-foot shielded RCA male to male stereo cable, 3-foot USB cable, RCA female to female stereo adapter, and audio capture USB device

2. Cassette Player-Cassette Tape to MP3 CD Converter- Powered by Battery or USB,Convert Walkman Tape Cassette to MP3, Compatible with Laptop and PC, USB Cable,Software CD,3.5mm Jack Earphone-DIGITNOW

• 1,Cassette tape to mp3 converter：Via a USB cable, you can convert old mix tapes and cassette to MP3 to Play on iPod/MP3 player or burn to CD
• 2,Audacity software: Using software to convert cassette tape to digital MP3. Audio output enables you to listen on your headphones, or other speaker system
• 3,Portable design for Cassette Walkman: Compact Size and suitable weight makes you enjoy the music conveniently in any where via 3.5mm jack earphone (included). No installation or drivers required
• 4, Various compatibilities: Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, mac older than version 10.5. Battery(not included)/USB-powered operation
• 5, Package Included: 1 x USB Cassette Capture, 1 x USB Cable, 1 x Software CD, 1 x 3.5mm jack earphone, 1 x User Manual

3. Y&H Cassette Tape Player Record Tape to MP3 Digital Converter,USB Cassette Capture,Save to USB Flash Drive Directly,No Need Computer

• TAPE PLAYER CAPTURES - For Product Use, Please Contact Our Customer Serviceezcap231 cassette tape to MP3 converter,Awaken your memory of the past, awaken the classic music,Do not worry about damaging the tape
• USB CASSETTE CONVERTER - You can easily Record, Captures,convert your old tape to MP3 format,Share to your Grandparents,Mom,Dad and Friends
• USB PORT - Support FAT，FAT32，exFAT,MP3 format Save to USB Flash Drive,Flexible battery (Not included) or USB-powered operation
• MULTIFUNCTIONAL TAPE CONVERTER - It can be used as walkman, listen to the cassette/tape with headphone, speaker, car stereo. Just plug the 3.55mm AUX jack into converter, then enjoy the sound memory
• PORTABLE DESIGN - Can be used as personal cassette player,You can hold it in your hand and put it in your pocket

4. Feir Cassette Converter Portable Cassette to MP3 Converter Stereo USB Cassette Digital Tape MP3 Music Player to MP3 Format with Headphones No PC Required

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• Cassette Player, Multifunctional converter. It can be used as walkman, listen to the cassette/tape with headphone, speaker, car stereo. Just plug the 3.55mm AUX jack into converter, then enjoy the sound memory,
• Portable Tape Player Captures , With Auto Reverse function. Rediscover your old cassette tapes on the go. Portable design fits in virtually any bag and enables you to play and transfer anywhere,
• Cassette Player and Tape-to-Digital Converter, with playback function for easily checking the recorded file. It may cause some trouble with the NTFS format of thumb drive. Recommendation format of Thumb/Flash Drive, USB Disk: FAT, FAT32, exFAT,
• Walkman Tape Cassettes, Power Supply: 2×AA Battery (Not including)/ 5V DC USB Power. Attention: It records only when the tape be playing.

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5. Cassette to MP3 Converter,USB Cassette Player to MP3 Converter for PC,Laptop,Personal Computers,Mac with Headphones,from Tapes to Mp3

• Tape to Digital Files- USB cassette capture is a small USB tape player that works with all kinds of tapes. Converting the music on your tapes into MP3 files is a new innovation to digital these old tapes in a cheap way. This device also has an easy-to-use USB connection .
• Portable Size & Universal- Works perfectly with any standard 3.5mm AUX jack, meaning you can use headphones, earbuds, or an audio port to your car speakers.
• Portable design for Cassette Walkman- Compact Size and suitable weight makes you enjoy the music conveniently in any where via 3.5mm jack earphone (included). It runs on battery or USB power.Plug and Play USB device,no installation or drivers required.
• Various compatibilities- Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, mac older than version 10.5. Come with software CD to guide you to convert your cassette tapes , It is very easy to convert your cassette collection and edit the Audio.
• Warranty- We provide free replacement in 30 days and one year warranty.If you have any questions,please email us,we are here for help!

6. Cassette Player Tape to MP3 Converter via USB Retro Walkman Auto Reverse Portable Audio Music Tape Player with Earphone by KALULI

• CONVERTS TAPE TO MP3 -- Our unique tape recorder quickly converts old cassettes to MP3 format via a USB cable. Also works with laptop CD burners
• USB CASSETTE CAPTURE -- You can easily Record, Captures,convert your old tape to MP3 format,with playback function for easily checking the recorded file. USB port supports FAT, FAT32, exFAT formats up to 64G
• RETRO CASSETTE PLAYER-- Convert cassette music to MP3 format, keep those old memory in this player forever, awaken your memory of the past and classic music, no worry about damaging the tape
• INNOVATIVE DESIGN-- Audio editing software included, audio output enables you to listen on your stereo, headphones, or other speaker system. Convert your old mix tapes and cassette to MP3 to playback on iPod/MP3 plater or burn it to CD
• PORTABLE SIZE ATANDER 3.5 JACK -- The portable size allows it to fit in virtually any bag and enables you to play and transfer music anywhere. Support 3.5mm AUX jack, you can connect it to your car speaker, speaker, or just connect it with an earphone to listen the music

7. Cassette Player Converter, Convert Tapes to Digital MP3 Portable Walkman with New Upgrade Convenient Software (AudioLAVA)

• Cassette to MP3 Converter: Convert cassette tape into digital format on your PC, laptop, and MAC. Works with all kinds of tapes. And support to burn the digital music file on your audio CD or tranfer it to your smart phone, MP3, SD card and USB flash drive.
• Professional audio editing software(AudioLAVA): Convert Your Tapes to MP3 only 2 steps Convert , Also Playback on iPod/MP3 player or burn it to CD.
• Quality Assurance : New Metal Cassette Deck(Mechanism) with automatic Reverse function, 4-channel stereo magnetic head，more stable quality
• Amazing Compatibility: The softwares in 5-inch CD is compatible with Windows 2000/XP, Vista 32bit 64bit, Windows 7, Windows 10 & Mac
• Portable Designed and stylish appearance: Lightweight and compact Walkman. Fashionable Top Grade Black Design with Metallic Painting！Similar the texture of the piano!

8. Portable Cassette Player Converter, Converts Tapes to Digital MP3 Walkman Player with New Upgrade Convenient Software (AudioLAVA)

Cassette To Mp3 Converter Software

• Cassette to MP3 Converter: Convert cassette tape into digital format on your PC, laptop, and MAC. Works with all kinds of tapes. And support to burn the digital music file on your audio CD or tranfer it to your smart phone, MP3, SD card and USB flash drive.
• Portable Designed and stylish appearance: Lightweight and compact Walkman. Fashionable Top Grade Black Design with Metallic Painting！Similar the texture of the piano!
• Quality Assurance : New Metal Cassette Deck(Mechanism) with automatic Reverse function, 4-channel stereo magnetic head，more stable quality
• Professional audio editing software(AudioLAVA): Convert Your Tapes to MP3 only 2 steps Convert , Also Playback on iPod/MP3 player or burn it to CD.
• Amazing Compatibility: The softwares in 5-inch CD is compatible with Windows 2000/XP, Vista 32bit 64bit, Windows 7, Windows 10 & Mac

9. Dansrueus Updated Cassette to MP3 Converter, USB Cassette Player from Tapes to MP3, Digital Files for Laptop PC and Mac with Headphones from Tapes to Mp3 New Technology,Silver

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• Portable Size Stander 3.5 Jack The portable size allows it to fit in virtually any bag and enables you to play and transfer music anywhere. Support 3.5mm AUX jack, you can connect it to your car speaker, speaker, or just connect it with an earphone to listen the music.
• Compact Design Lightweight and compact. It runs on battery or USB power. Besides，when it connect to USB power or connects to your computer, This cassette will not need a battery, which is easy to use. You can use power bank as a battery.
• Software Required Come with software CD to guide you to convert your cassette tapes , Compatible with all Windows System and Mac OS. It is very easy to convert your cassette collection and edit the Audio.
• Package Included If you laptop or PC doesn’t have a CD-ROM, please contact us and we'll send you a digital copy. Package included: 1 x USB Cassette Capture, 1 x USB Cable, 1 x Software CD, 1 x 3.5mm jack earphone, 1 x User Manual ( Cassette tape is NOT included ).

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• Tape to Digital Files USB cassette capture is a small USB tape player that works with all kinds of tapes. Converting the music on your tapes into MP3 files is a new innovation to digital these old tapes in a cheap way. This device also has an easy-to-use USB connection .
• Portable Size Stander 3.5 Jack The portable size allows it to fit in virtually any bag and enables you to play and transfer music anywhere. Support 3.5mm AUX jack, you can connect it to your car speaker, speaker, or just connect it with an earphone to listen the music.
• Compact Design Lightweight and compact. It runs on battery or USB power. Besides，when it connect to USB power or connects to your computer, This cassette will not need a battery, which is easy to use. You can use power bank as a battery.
• Software Required Come with software CD to guide you to convert your cassette tapes , Compatible with all Windows System and Mac OS. It is very easy to convert your cassette collection and edit the Audio.
• Package Included If you laptop or PC doesn’t have a CD-ROM, please contact us and we'll send you a digital copy. Package included: 1 x USB Cassette Capture, 1 x USB Cable, 1 x Software CD, 1 x 3.5mm jack earphone, 1 x User Manual ( Cassette tape is NOT included ).