audacity 1.3.14 beta won't copy cassettes onto my Win 7 pc

[rockette]

I recently cleared out a lot of cassette tapes mainly compilations, and as I have a new PC and lots of space, thought I would copy them onto it and make some cds for my car. My PC is a dell vostro 460 running Windows 7 64 bit version. I downloaded Audacity 1.3.14 beta. Then I put a tape in my Cassette player and connected its headphones socket to the line out on my pc using a standard 3.5mm jack to jack cable. Then I started up audacity and attempted to copy the tape onto my pc. Doesn't work, not at all, no sound bars, nothing. I then looked up the various help forums and found a lot of complicated fixes I needed to make to get my version of audacity to work with Windows 7, which I did, but it is still not working. I am at a loss on what to do next. I am happy that the Realtek line in is correctly configured on my pc but am not sure how to identify the original recording device to audacity. It is an Aiwa cassette player - where do I tell it that? (I have tested the tape in stand alone form and it works fine). Where to now?

[rockette]

Just to add my line is a Realtek high def.

[kozikowski]

It sounds like you got the wrong connector on the computer. Do the touch test. Unplug your cassette machine, start Audacity recording and touch one RCA center pin and then the other. The noise should go way up when you do that. You are intentionally creating noise to test the channel.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/touch.jpg

Make sure the other hand is only touching plastic or rubber.

You should be plugged into the blue Stereo Line-In of your computer. Are you?

The RCAs should be connected to the Stereo Line-Out of the cassette machine. You can test the tape machine output with a pair of headphones or earbuds and a short RCA to RCA cable

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/earBudsRCA.jpg

There should be something there, even if it's not very loud. Let's see which one fails.

Koz

[rockette]

Not sure what you mean by two pins. I have a simple 3.5mm jack to jack cable, one end is plugged into headphones (earphones) socket on cassette player, other end is plugged into linein in my pc. Know this is correct because it is marked and color coded blue.

[kozikowski]

Is Windows pointing to the blue-socket Stereo Line-In for recording? Scan down to Windows Problems.

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... trol_Panel

When you plug your headphones into the cassette player, is the volume OK? Could you listen to that for a long time if you wanted?

Leave Audacity off.

Start > Control Panels > Sound > Recording > Line-In > Properties > Listen > Listen to this device (with the computer's speakers)

Does that work?

Koz