I am using a cassette player, imac and a stereo RCA jack out of the line out ports on the player into the line in port on the imac. I can record just fine and even listen to the sound as it is recording. The sound fades slightly in and out while recording and the resulting recording also has a slight fading in and out of sound. There was something on this forum for windows users about this problem, but not for mac users. Has anyone else had this problem. At first I thought it was the player, but then I got another player and I’m still having the problem. I also have updated to the latest version of Audacity. The only thing I can think of at this point is maybe the cable I am using to connect the player to the computer. Oh yeah…my mac has snow leopard operating system.
It is possible that what you are hearing is the result of the original cassette tape being recorded with some kind of “auto gain” function active. If you plug headphones into the cassette player and listen to that tape, is the variation in sound level heard? If so, the problem is with the source recording and not with your attempt to re-record using Audacity.
You are probably right. Other tapes I’ve found to be OK. Thanks, I’m glad I didn’t give up, because it will be nice to have my music converted after all this time.
If you discover that the real problem was on the original tape cassette recording, you can, after recording the tape into Audacity, try recovering the volume level by using the Envelope tool to selectively increase the quiet parts. It may not be perfect but it’s worth a try.