I’m trying to digitize my parents wedding from 1973 on audio cassette. I have a cassette player connected via USB to my Mac Pro. I click play on the cassette deck, and then click record in Audacity. Audio begins to record, and seems to be recording perfectly. However, every time I try to record the complete tape, the recording randomly stops. It has stopped at around 4 minutes, 11, minutes, 20 minutes, and a few other attempts have failed inbetween. Once the recording stops, trying to hit record again will give me an "Error opening recording device. Error code: -9986 internal PortAudio error. The code provided is shown below. Once I get this error, my only option is to quit the app and relaunch, then repeat the whole thing over again. Any help?
{
“timestamp”: 1681845657,
“event_id”: “1bf6156d11d640afb950de29f7542138”,
“platform”: “native”,
“release”: “audacity@3.2.5”,
“contexts”: {
“os”: {
“type”: “os”,
“name”: “Macintosh”,
“version”: “10.16.0”
}
},
“exception”: {
“values”: [
{
“type”: “Error”,
“value”: “Error opening recording device.\nError code: -9986 Internal PortAudio error.”,
“mechanism”: {
“type”: “runtime_error”,
“handled”: false
}
}
]
}
}
Is the cassette a “Super USB Audio Capture” or similar $40 cassette-to-USB device? Does it show up as “PnP Audio Device” or similar? If so, those devices are known to not work well with macOS.
Yup, it is. I actually have a very good Philips deck, but it’s so old the belts are no good, and I didn’t want to spring for a brand new deck, so got one of those cheap ones 
The trouble with those decks is the USB connection. You could get a Behringer UCA-202 and a cable to run from the headphone out of the cassette deck to the RCA inputs of the UCA-202.
The other option is to record until it fails, back up the tape a bit, do Transport (menu) > Rescan Audio Devices in Audacity, hit record, repeat until the whole tape is recorded. Then edit it together.
So you think that the USB out from the Behringer will not have the same problem as the USB out of the cassette player?
Yes, the Behringer will not have the same problem. No-one using one of those devices has reported this problem. I’ve used one for years.
There are lots of other options. The Behringer just happens to be one of the least expensive and actually works.
You probably don’t need to spring for a new tape deck either - I would try replacing the belts first (you should still be able to find them on the Internet hopefully) - and clean the capstan and pinch roller - and the playback head. I had my Nakamichi deck professionally serviced when I converted my tapes.
You may find this page in the audacity manual useful:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tips_for_recording_from_cassette_tape.html
And this suggested workflow:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/sample_workflow_for_tape_digitization.html
Peter
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