Convert audio cassette to MP3

[David]

I just bought a 2006 Toyota Prius. Instead of a cassette player it has an aux-in jack. After buying a $4 male-to-male jack and a cable from Radio Shack I can play MP3s from my Treo 650 through my cars stereo. The sound is good and I control what plays from the Treo.

The difficulty is a I have bunch of books-on-tape that I like to listen to on long drives. I can certainly use an old portable cassette player to input the cassettes into my computer and convert to MP3 but would like to find an easier more automated and ideally faster way of accomplishing this. Any suggestions?

Thank you.

[finman]

portable "walk-man" cassette player from the 80s?

[Armature]

Originally posted by David@Mar 26 2006, 09:14 AM
I just bought a 2006 Toyota Prius.  Instead of a cassette player it has an aux-in jack.  After buying a $4 male-to-male jack and a cable from Radio Shack I can play MP3s from my Treo 650 through my cars stereo.  The sound is good and I control what plays from the Treo.

The difficulty is a I have bunch of books-on-tape that I like to listen to on long drives.  I can certainly use an old portable cassette player to input the cassettes into my computer and convert to MP3 but would like to find an easier more automated and ideally faster way of accomplishing this.  Any suggestions?

Thank you.

[snapback]230418[/snapback]

Use your portable tape player with the aux-in jack.

David

[naterprius]

You could always get one of these:

http://www.meritline.com/meritline-digi-de...c-cassette.html

Very cool.

Nate

[petteri]

Originally posted by naterprius@Mar 26 2006, 02:06 PM
You could always get one of these:

http://www.meritline.com/meritline-digi-de...c-cassette.html

Very cool.

Nate

[snapback]230495[/snapback]

What is the advantage of this over just plugging in you existing tape deck into the line-in on your sound card? I'd really hate to eat up a drive bay for this. The software for this is the key here! If there is any sort of auto track feature or sound mixing/balancing then that is what you are really paying for.

[David]

Well, I splurged and ordered one of the Digi Decks. It looks like the software/harware combination will ease the process of converting the tapes since it will do both sides. Thanks for the tip.

[khoult]

I've converted tapes to MP3 by just hooking the cassette player to the audio-in jack on my PC, and running a sound recorder something like this freeware:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/audacity.html

From there you can either burn a MP3 CD or an audio CD.

[naterprius]

Originally posted by David@Mar 26 2006, 08:10 PM
Well, I splurged and ordered one of the Digi Decks.  It looks like the software/harware combination will ease the process of converting the tapes since it will do both sides.  Thanks for the tip.

[snapback]230679[/snapback]

Please report back once you try it out and let us know if you like it.

Nate

[naterprius]

Oh, and Dave, this is the coolest SD card available for the Treo 650:

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Default.aspx?CatID=1119

It has a built-in USB port, no reader required. I have the 1 GB version for my Treo 650. One caveat, when it's new, it is kind of a tight fit in the Treo. The sticker will eventually wear and it will slide in and out nicely.

Nate

[keydiver]

Originally posted by khoult@Mar 27 2006, 12:22 PM
I've converted tapes to MP3 by just hooking the cassette player to the audio-in jack on my PC, and running a sound recorder something like this freeware:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/audacity.html

From there you can either  burn a MP3 CD or an audio CD.

[snapback]230834[/snapback]

I do the same thing, using software I downloaded from Blaze Audio:
Rip-Edit-Burn
I just plugged by spare home cassette deck into the AUX Input jack of my PC sound card, and record away! The software lets you edit the wav files, and then burn them as MP3 files to a CD. The quality is very good, but depends of course on how good the source tape and the home cassette deck are.