Transferring Records and Cassettes to Your Computer

For quite some time, I've thought about copying some my music on cassettes into my computer, then burning a CD. I have some rare recordings that are no longer available in the marketplace and I was worried that some day the cassettes would break and that music would be gone forever. I knew that the technology to do this has been around for a few years, but I just never had to excess time to do it...or more correctly put, I had other things on my platter that were more important.

Recently, with the addition of a new, more powerful computer at home, I finally made time to do it, or a least make a good start at it. I thought I would share some of my experiences with you in case that is something you might want to consider.

In order to do it, the first thing you need is a special cable to connect your turntable or cassette player to the sound card in your computer (I will focus the rest of this article on using a cassette player since I don't have records or a turntable anymore). Music-playing devices have long used what is called RCA jacks to interconnect. There are usually two RCA plugs to connect each device, one for left channel and one for the right channel. On the other hand, computers do not use RCA jacks. Rather they use a smaller plug that has both left and right channels together on one plug.

So, you need to purchase a cable that has two RCA jacks on one end and a single computer-type jack on the other. And since your music system is probably some distance from your computer, you would need a long cable. While not always easy to find, they are available...and they come in lengths up to 50 feet. And the good news is that they are not that expensive. For instance, Tiger Direct carries a 12', 25' and 50' versions of this cable for under $20 (25' is $9.95). I bought mine at Fry's Superstore over in Renton, WA , although I had to pay a little more for them there (I was there, so I just did it).

Just plug the ends with the RCA jacks into your cassette player and the
other end into the input jack on your computer's sound card. But, of course, this is only the beginning. You need the right software to make this all work.

As you know, I love free software and that was the first place I started looking. And guess what...I came up empty on this one. There just wasn't anything out there that I could find that did the job. Next, I looked at my Nero CD and DVD burning software to see if it might have what I was looking for. It does...but it stinks!

Soundtrax is a small program that comes as part of the Nero package. I tried to make it work and it just wouldn't do the job easily. I even read their instructions, which were worthless. It is not a good option. So, I gave up and accepted the fact that I would have to spend some money to do this. So I started doing my research.

And to make a long story short, I found a good one. I was able to try it out for a short time with no limitations and decided I had found the perfect program for only $34.95. In the next blog I will tell you all about it.