I am not sure where to post this question, hopefully I have it in the correct place.
I have a cassette player and some audio book cassettes but they are not normal audio cassettes, they are audio-book and are put out by Brilliance and called BookCassette. they are different in that "Bookcassette audiobooks put three hours of listening on each tape – twice the normal amount! Every BookCassette is a recording that is both unabridged and affordable. To give you the complete book at an affordable price, Brilliance has used a unique recording method that uses both tracks on each side of the tape and therefore requires balance control on the tape player you use. Twice as much recording can be captured on the same tape. Most non-portable tape players have balance control. Your tape player’s balance control allows each track to be isolated for listening. " This would be nice but I don’t have a cassette player with this ability, so I tried to record using audacity and recorded using stereo but both sides still play, even on each track, I have not figured out how to separate them. I muted one while playing the other but it still plays both sides, I tried L------R slider to try and shut off one while recording and while listening, didn’t work, I was going to use the stereo splitter but it’s grayed out when I have this file open. but the stereo splitter is not grayed out on other tracks?? I purchased a “bookcassette adapter” but it doesn’t help or doesn’t work. probably wasted my 10.00 on that.
Sorry this is so long but wanted to explain what we have tried already. Hopefully someone has encountered this problem and knows an answer. I am using Windows XP, and Audacity 1.2.6.
"both tracks on each side of the tape "
makes no sense
you can only record on one side of the tape
now they may use two mono tracks on each side of a cassette (which is the other half of the same side of the tape) if you could pick which one - but that is the same side of the tape
they could be running at fractional speed
they could be using a 4 track tape machine also
dont know about any balance control
most cheap decks do not let you pick left and right that way
but that does sound like they are using l & r channels separately
and my expensive deck does not have any balance either
i do that through my receiver
i suspect you have a mono type player
that combines the tracks
if you had a true stereo player what you said you tried to do should work.
record in stereo
split the tracks
slide one to the end of the other
to get the first half of the book in proper sequence
then export
repeat for the other half of the book
Bookcassette audiobooks put three hours of listening on each tape – twice the normal amount! Every BookCassette is a recording that is both unabridged and affordable. To give you the complete book at an affordable price, Brilliance has used a unique recording method that uses both tracks on each side of the tape and therefore requires balance control on the tape player you use. Twice as much recording can be captured on the same tape. Most non-portable tape players have balance control. Your tape player’s balance control allows each track to be isolated for listening.
When using players without balance control (I.E. portables & personal players), a BookCassette Adapter is needed. You must give your tapeplayer’s headphones the ability to isolate each speaker through the use of the Bookcassette Adapter. The Bookcassette Adapter gives you balance control on your headphones and is so easy to use – One end of this adapter plugs into the headphone jack on your player and the other end into your headset. > The Bookcassette Adapter Works ONLY on Stereo Tapeplayers> .
Only thing I’d alter in these instructions would be to explicity state “split stereo to mono”.
[BTW If there is bleed through from one channel to the other it may be possible to remove it using the invert “centre pan removal” method,
although the levels will have to be adjusted as any bleed through will be faint].
that appears to confirm that the person was using a mono recorder
looking over my collection i see a lot of “note” or voice cassette recorders that are mono. (all the micro tapes are mono)
my original norelco 150 was mono as were all of them back in the 60s.
my old boom box seems to be stereo.
it is hard to find any cassette players at all these days.
i did see a combo amfmcassettecd box recently. that might be stereo. but most of these things dont have cassette anymore.
the best choice to buy one is pioneer dual deck from vanns.
onkyo and teac also make them but their reviews show that quality is way down these days. and none of them hve the features you expected back in the 80s and 90s.
google or search amazon. cassette choices are way down.
but so are reel to reel decks. even fewer of them.
Hi SandyLea. It’s possible that, as has been already suggested, that your cassette player is a mono cassette player and not stereo. There are other possibilities of why this is not working for you, but before pursuing other possibilities it would be best to first establish whether or not you have the equipment that is needed - namely a stereo cassette player. Do you know the make and model number of your cassette player?
Wow, so many answers, thank you everyone! the cassette player is an RCA RP 3503 -B it’s a cheap one I picked up at Target or WalMart, wasn’t even $20.00. I found cassette players are hard to find…and I didn’t want to spend a fortune just to record this audio-book. the player I have had worked on all the other cassettes but then I didn’t have this problem with those as they were just plain cassettes. …
That being said, I just discovered my mother has an very old dual stereo cassette player, going to see if I can get it to work. just tried it and her cassette doesn’t work either, doesn’t even play them any longer, it was old and just worn out I guess… Guess I am off to find a stereo cassette player…
Thanks to everyone for all the great replies, I printed them out and am off to try some of them, this is proving a good learning tool for me…
The “Voice recorder” tag and the fact it only has one speaker and one built-in microphone suggests it is mono.
[My 1980’s ghetto-blaster/ boom-box was stereo and had two built-in microphones, and four speakers]
I have been looking on line , thought maybe Best Buy or Radio Shack might have what I need but so far I can’t always tell, sometimes they say stereo but it isn’t really stereo cassette… so I am going to go to the store and see if I can find someone who knows something… anything is a lot more than what I know! I hate to pay to much for it, as I don’t really need a cassette player. but… I really want to rip this book, as we have not been able to locate it anywhere else.
radio shack has nothing - i looked already
best buy has nothing - at least in the store i tried
amazon has 3 brands only one with good reviews
i got the pioneer from vanns (due next wednesday)
teac is not the same quality it used to be
ditto onkyo
if you dont like amazon or vanns
then try all the bigmart type stores
and drug stores
you might find a boom box with stereo for under $50 or so
else you are looking at about $150 for a deck plus you still need the amplifer and speakers to connect to it
Bummer, don’t know if that book is worth it , I need to keep the cost low since I rarely use cassettes. I am converting all to Mp3 files so I play on my IPOD.
I did find a Coby CX-49 Personal AM/FM Stereo Cassette Player - with the bookcassette adapter that MIGHT work, I wrote the seller and asked it played in stereo. And for 12.00 it’s sure cheaper than a more expensive option.