Recording all sounds from cassette

[oralhist]

New user, self taught. Please excuse my ignorance.
Using Audacity 3.7.1 to transfer oral history tapes to digital media. I purchased a DigitNow USB cable. The software disk had Audacity 1.2.6, which I have replaced with 3.7.1. My recordings have all turned out with periods of silence where the original tape had hum, background noise (clock ticking) and muttered vocalizations. Some of this contains valuable data that can be heard and understood on the original tape, but is totally removed from the digitized copy. The manual has much info on using features I don’t even understand, but not much on basic setup. I discovered the “Effect” tab menu and selected the “Plugin Manager”. It showed a list of filters all enabled. I disabled them all and now have much more faithful copy of the original sounds, but still drops out to silence in spots where the original has some noise. Is there more I can do to preserve all sounds from the tape?
I have also set both playback and record levels to max with no clipping indicated, this helped. Still unable to listen to either playback or record while recording, must stop and play back the digital version to see if I have been wasting my time. Cannot find a way to listen thru my headphones while recording. Any guidance on either problem appreciated. I know there are similar questions in the Audacity help files and am reading thru them even as I post this,

[DVDdoug]

Make sure Windows “enhancements” are turned OFF.

Cannot find a way to listen thru my headphones while recording.

Enable Audible input monitoring. Or plug the headphones into the cassette player? I assume it has a headphone jack?

[oralhist]

You win, buy yourself a cigar. I did both the suggested fixes, “Audible Input Monitoring” was the obvious solution because now I can hear the recording and adjust the signal level. Audio is much better now, even with all filters disabled. I can play with those filters now and see what works, and windows won’t monkey with it, so that’s good too. Thanks for the help, I’m a sound man now!