Recording from cassette player problem...

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

I connected my Walkman cassette player into the microphone input of my Toshiba laptop running Win 8.1 Audacity 2.0.6

I am getting no input at all from the Walkman.

Followed the instructions in help, but am getting nowhere.

Thanks!

2

Did you select the external microphone input as your [u]recording source[/u]? (Don’t select the Laptop’s built-in mic or you’ll be recording the sounds in the room.)

Is the volume turned-up on the tape player? Have you plugged-in headphones to make sure sound is coming out?

I connected my Walkman cassette player into the microphone input of my Toshiba laptop

That should “work” but it’s the wrong interface. The headphone-output signal is about 100 times stronger than a microphone signal. So, you might overload/distort the mic input. Plus, the mic input on a laptop or regular soundcard is usually low-quality and often mono. (Mono is OK if your tapes are not stereo.)

You’ll get better results with the line-input on a regular desktop/tower computer, or with a line-level audio interface such as the [u]Behringer UCA202[/u]. (Don’t buy a regular “USB Soundcard” because they are exactly like laptops with mic-in and headphone-out.)