I did finally figure out how to record from the cassettes and then add the lables so now have separate tacks between songs. I didn’t add titles I just wanted tracks . I only have two walkman style cassette decks and one boom box . I use the old sanyo cassette player to rewind and fast forward tapes since many sat so long . Since the sanyo does play it does need new belts so if the tape is dragging the song drops pitch , the belts are not that bad I looked but the more I use it they seem to slip a bit . I use a sony auto reverse player that I had a new belt that fit and it seems to work well now . I haven’t tried the boom box but none have dual capstons . I also run the sony off a 3 volt wall wart since battiers can drain fast The boom box does seem to play any tape and not drag even if the cassette draps in the sony walkman player , most likely becuase it has a much larger motor and belt and large metal pully’s on the capstons so it does play better.
Most all the cassette tapes I have a store bought and seem to play well except a few really old ones but I did transfer these to a better shell and they were fine except for a few minor short slow spots but they are good enough .
I can’t keep to many WAV files on my pc or I use up to much HD space so once I have them burned to c/d I svae them on a playlist on windows media player then send that playlist to CDBurnerXP so I can select the burn speed I want and delete the wav files and do more. I did buy CD R’s because using CDRW one sony CD player read and played them as two newer sony cd players that can play wav or mp3 but the two older panasonic cd players would read and play nothing but CDr-R . I did record radio shows before in MP3 and some had music and didn’t sound that bad yet since cd players are now difficult to get I chose CD-R disc’s just in case players begin to die . I can’t even find many CD players these days. Perhaps one day I might get a lower end MP3 player small and no moving parts.
I really don’t have that many cassettes I want to transfer to CD maybe 20 and I skip the songs I don’t care for. So 10 recordings might do it all.
I’m 65 so my ears are probably not as good as they once were plus playing guitar for over 40 years in loud places didn’t help . It’s mainly Beatles songs I don’t have on CD and blues songs , some CSN&Y , SRV , Hendrix that I have on cassette . I do have a few cassettes I made copies of off the VCR of SRV concert yet it does not sound quite as good as store bought cassettes but good enough to pass.
I just keep the VU Audacity meters on the DB scale where the loud parts just go past - 6bd and the rest at -6bd and I did notice the graph where you set the tags seems to show the linear scale for some reason so I see it’s just at 0 in the center and + or- 5 db sometimes a bit above yet the recordings are loud enough and clean so I don’t edit them more ie I don’t use noise removal or normalize , I don’t hear any tape hiss and the tracks are plenty loud , as long as a store bought CD as far as I can tell using speakers or headphones and leaving the CD player vol alone . I can see exactly where to place the lables looking at the graph and if in doubt i place a marker then play then pause , remove the marker because if i don’t a lable gets placed there when i add the lable at the between the end of the last song and beginning of the next. I use the pause while recording while cueing up the next song . If I use stop it add’s a track and gets me mixed up.
I am not sure but I got some DVD+R discs yet I’m not sure if the CD players can read these or not. I thought I could gt more songs on one disc rather than recording on Audacity only to see I am past the 80 min max and need to move the extra songs onto another recording yet I have a feeling the DVD+R discs will have too many songs and not work on a CD player.
I think I have it figured out now , so far so good . I just want to add , thank all of you for your help . It is time consuming recording yet it is something to do late at night that does not disturb any neighbors in this very old apt I and my wife reside in.