Cassette to CD using Audacity on Mac OS X

[rimbaud65]

Today I bought another cassette deck which made my earlier available for other duties. This deck I'm about to use is a Pioneer CT-W208R and my computer is a Macbook 2,1, running on Mac OS 10.4.11.

The other duty I had on mind was to begin converting these cassettes to CDs, before they deteriorate. Now, I thought I take a crack on Audacity and began trying with Audacity 1.3.12 (Beta). I got it to work on my Macbook, plugged in my deck to the computer I think correctly and got to the point when I was to start recording something. It seemed right, but the problem I had was that the file I ended up with (Watch that man, Alladin sane, David Bowie) sounded very strange when I played it back. It began but soon it muddled up and the sound began to play sort of like on top of each other, as though there were a couple of songs at the same time. I hope that explains it. Since I got it so far, that atleast something was recorded, I figure there is some additional things to do on the settings, the configuration. I've tried Audacity 1.2.5, too, apparantly with the same results.

[billw58]

Have a look at this and see if it helps: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... iscs_to_CD

Make sure you have your line input selected for input/recording in both the System Preferences Sound panel and in Audacity > Preferences, Devices section.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... references

-- Bill

[kozikowski]

We expect what you did to work. You can't, however, stop and start. That creates two musical tracks right on top of each other -- and they play at the same time.

Since you're in Audacity 1.3.12, you can use Append Record Shift-R to jam one live recording at the end of an existing one -- not regular Record.

However. It is highly recommended to Export As WAV each time you get to the end of one tape. Audacity will not Save sound files and it's really easy to lose or damage a performance by awkward file management or errors.

Koz

[rimbaud65]

Thank you sir. " Make sure you have your line input selected for input/recording in both the System Preferences Sound panel and in Audacity > Preferences, Devices section." It seemed to be it, right away thanks for the help, I appreciate it. What do you recommend I use 1.3.12 (Beta), or Audacity 1.2.5?

[billw58]

What do you recommend I use 1.3.12 (Beta), or Audacity 1.2.5?

1.3.12, no question.

-- Bill

[billw58]

@Koz: 10-to-1 the OP had line input selected in System Preferences and microphone in Audacity preferences, and was recording the MacBooks speakers with the MacBook microphone.

-- Bill

[kozikowski]

I completely missed that.

Caffeine deprivation.

Koz

[rimbaud65]

Now I've been able to record from a cassette to a CD. Not totally satisfying, because I think it was a bit too loud so the sound was hopefully not the best of what it could be. I assume it's just a matter of trying and testing or is there levels which are preferably? I managed to use some functions like noice reduction and such. However the reason I'm asking again is how I'll do individual tracks from the cassette unto the CD, for example 6 songs on the cassette should get 6 tracks on the CD in the normal way. As it happened now the first try all got into 1 (45 minutes). I have tried Analyze and Silence finder a couple of times, but as it seems it can only detect 2 tracks and not the 6. I'll appreciate any help, as before.

[billw58]

You should be able to get very good sound going from the output of your cassette deck to the line input of your MacBook. We recommend that your maximum peak level not exceed -6dB during recording to avoid clipping. You can adjust the levels afterwards to maximize the volume of the recording.

Have a look at this page in the manual http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... _Recording . Scroll down to "Step 3 - Set levels and do a test recording".

As for splitting tracks, please see the tutorial I linked to in my first post in this thread.

-- Bill

[rimbaud65]

I've got it to work now. However I think there's some work to do everytime with splitting tracks. I was hoping that the function "Silcence finder" could detect where there is a break and automatically managage the splitting up into tracks.