All I need to do is burn my cassettes to CD's

[will09]

I am new here. I just downloaded Audacity a few weeks ago and played around a bit to try to understand it.

I have old cassette tapes and do have an old sanyo cassette player and a newer sony cassette player with radio ones from the 80's and the sony from the 90's and a large Panasonic boombox from the 90's with line inputs and dual cassettes one plays and records the other just plays so I can make cassette copies or even record off a CD to cassette or record to cassette .

I bring up what I have since some old cassestte taps play well and a few are not so good . It seems even if a tape drags a bit the panasonic boom box can play them at proper speed since it must have more power than the walkman players I have .

All three have only headphone outputs and all work off the volume pot and seem to show well on the DB graph on Audacity .

I have Realtek HD audio on my PC windows xp pro. I have the powered speakers on the PC and all the connections on the back of the pc so the speakers are on two speaker stereo out it has three more speaker outs I don't use and it has a line in (blue) which I have the 1/8" stereo line cord plugged in to then plug into the cassette players headphone jacks.

I see the proper connections on Audacity and I can hear the cassette tapes through the pc speakers as I play or record .

My confusion begins on what is the simple way to record the cassettes to the audacity then I need Wav since I have a few CD players I use in my car that can play MP3 two are sony late model ones and one is a panasonic . but the better older cd players I have only play WAV so since all play WAV that's what I'm going for. just in case you know. I use the cassette deck in my old car with a cassette adapter to play cd's in my car. I use the PC to play them in the apt or one of the walkman type players in bed or walking.

If the cassettes play well then all I need to really do is record then as is and remove the hiss which I guess is something you do after recording , is that correct ? I don't want to do anything other than record them and burn them on CD's , don't need lables of titles nothing fancy. a few I do want to skip some songs I don't care for and on a few cassettes there may be 2 or 3 songs I like and other tapes the same so I can just record the songs I want on audacity then burn them . I have CD burner XP loaded to burn them and windows player to hear them . I used to use CD burner xp to burn MP3's off an online radio show that had mp3 file format already there so I stayed with the same burner.

I am confused about the levels line and out . Audacity says to keep them out of the red MU area I understand that . I had my level on the Realtek line in all the way up and found even with the cassette headphone almost at 0 the meters were to high , I could keep them out of the red . Is it just trial and error to get the best sound? I know if the play level is to low you get hiss and lose the highs so is it best to keep the player up as much as possible and use the PC Realtek to lower the line input level then set it on audacity . Some where on audacity I read you use the audacity in and out to adjust the level yet isn't it really only the line in I need to be concerned about and not the output level controls?

Man , I hope I make sense asking all these questions. I can see how it works sort of . I used to record on reel to reels and cassettes from LP's but the reel to reels had MU meters so I was easy to see and I would simply plug the record player in the RTR and the cassette deck the panasonic I have , the line in sets the level you can't adjust that you can only set the level of say the CD player headphone out . I used to use the boom box line in for my XP radio or a CD player . Like if I used the XP in my car and had the XM radio level to high the sound through the cassette adapter through the car player would be loud and distorted same as when I used the CD players through the car cassette player so I needed to put the level at about half way then I could get clear sound and turn the radio vol up or down to suit . Seemed to work fine . This is similar in that respect correct? .

[kozikowski]

it has a line in (blue) which I have the 1/8" stereo line cord plugged in to then plug into the cassette players headphone jacks.

Exactly correct. The magic words are "Stereo Line-In." Two high volume audio channels, Left and Right. We tell people that nobody is breaking down the door to award quality prizes to sound cards. They're usually pretty dreadful, but most of them do work. (we had one run of cards at work that didn't. I still wake up screaming).

After the soundcard, it's all digital so if you can get the show that far, the rest is button pushing.

As you noticed, the sound meters on the tape machines tend to be "VU Type" meters with a 0, 1, 2, 3 red zone in the top third. I remember the "0" VU Consumer DV conversion is about -12dB on the Audacity meters, although the conversion isn't exact. So if you have a test tone on a tape (booooooooooooo), that's where to put it.

As long as you get close in the raw recording, you can do corrections later in post production.

A little low is a very minor inconvenience, but too high is deadly. If the Audacity sound meters smack maximum or the blue waves go all the way up, that portion of the sound is damaged, probably permanently. So pay attention to the high peaks in the sound. Also, as you noted, too low will lead to hum and noise problems, although that's usually more of an analog thing.

This is a perfect recording.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_record.jpg

The sound on an Audio CD is not WAV files, but a special CD format. You need a Music CD Authoring Program such as iTunes or Windows Media to burn a Music CD that will play in your mom's car and everywhere else. The CD sound is WAV quality, so keeping the computer files WAV quality as much as possible is a really good idea.

You get 78 minutes into an Audio CD. If you lead a good life you may get 79. Compressing the sound, MP3 and other tricks doesn't help. The Audio CD format is fixed length and was designed before sound compression got good.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tu ... to_cd.html

Scan past the part of this that don't apply to you.

Koz

[kozikowski]

You can and should make the Audacity sound meters much larger. They tell you valuable things about the process. Click on the right-hand edge and pull sideways. The other tools will get out of the way.

Koz

[steve]

On tape you would normally aim for a high recording level, perhaps "pushing into the red" on occasion but not too often. In digital recordings you can't do that. Permanent damage starts as soon as you touch the red, so for digital recording the level should be far enough below 0 dB to ensure that the highest peaks don't hit the red. 0 dB is an absolute limit in digital recording.

Peaks up to about half the track height (-6 dB) is perfect while recording (If necessary it can be amplified/normalized a little higher before exporting the finished audio file).

Getting optimum levels can take some trial and error. Different operating systems and different sound cards have different ways to set the levels, frequently requiring the level to be set in multiple places. Sorry there is no definitive guide, but often the controls will have a "normal" position that is about 3/4 of the slider range. That is a good starting point.

If your recording shows flat tops/bottoms to the waveform (like below) that indicates that somewhere between the sound source and Audacity, something is being overloaded.

firsttrack000.png (10.79 KiB) Viewed 2777 times

[will09]

Ok , hear is what I have found when I first tried this .

On the Audacity screen input source and output source show exactly where my input and output are connected to on the pc .

I tried the soundthrough setting but didn't connect the pc in to the out I just marked the soundthrough and the playback had an odd sound. I un-checked the soundthrough and everything sounded fine . I can connect my cassette player from the headphone jack to line in on Realtek HD and already have the pc speakers connected to the Realtek speaker out and without even opening Audacity I can hear the cassette being played through the speakers .

What I don't understand , rather what makes no sense to me refering to the second link kozikowski posted is it states to hear playback un-mute the line inputs and turn the vol up . Well is it not true if the line inputs were muted then there would be no input to record , ie the same as having no player connected to the line in?

When you refer in the replies to damage or permanent damage are we talking the recording or the sound card . I would hope it's the recording and if so couldn't the recording simply be done again. I refer to this part of the reply "A little low is a very minor inconvenience, but too high is deadly. If the Audacity sound meters smack maximum or the blue waves go all the way up, that portion of the sound is damaged, probably permanently. So pay attention to the high peaks in the sound" and here "On tape you would normally aim for a high recording level, perhaps "pushing into the red" on occasion but not too often. In digital recordings you can't do that. Permanent damage starts as soon as you touch the red, so for digital recording the level should be far enough below 0 dB to ensure that the highest peaks don't hit the red. 0 dB is an absolute limit in digital recording."

[will09]

One other thing . I have windows media player didn't know I could burn from there yet isn't it better to use CDBurnerXP? Or does it matter.

[steve]

refering to the second link kozikowski posted is it states to hear playback un-mute the line inputs and turn the vol up

Sorry, I can't find that. If it's important please include a link to the actual page and an exact quote, then if it is an error it can be corrected.

I refer to this part of the reply "A little low is a very minor inconvenience, but too high is deadly. If the Audacity sound meters smack maximum or the blue waves go all the way up, that portion of the sound is damaged, probably permanently.

Perhaps a little over-dramatic but many new users assuming that the most appalling distorted mess of a recording can be magically transformed to sound like a professional studio recording. Obviously that is not the case. "Clipped" audio is difficult to fix. Badly clipped audio is impossible to fix. When audio is "clipped", the top/bottom of the waveform is missing and there is no way that Audacity (or any other program) can accurately work out what should be in the missing part. The best that can be hoped for from badly clipped audio is to try and make it sound a little less dreadful. The better solution for badly clipped audio is "delete -> start again".

[steve]

One other thing . I have windows media player didn't know I could burn from there yet isn't it better to use CDBurnerXP? Or does it matter.

Windows Media Player was one of the wonderful Microsoft features that persuaded me to switch to Linux

I've used CDBurnerXP a lot in the past. I like it. One of the best free CD burning programs available for Windows imho.
Sadly the default download of CDBurnerXP these days is bundled with OpenCandy, an adware installer, though a version without OpenCandy is still available as an "alternative" download option on the CDBurnerXP download page.

[will09]

Ok I recorded one cassette once I got the cassette to work as best as I could by putting the tape into a different shell . I played it back and it sounds as good as the cassette did . Now how to I save this so I can burn it to a CD ? I don't need lables . where and how do I save it to burn it? I read the part on saving but I'm confused . Do I save it to media player or CDBurnerXP . I'm lost now.

[steve]

Now how to I save this so I can burn it to a CD ?

You need to "Export" it as one or more WAV files.
If you export it as one WAV file you will get a CD with one audio track that plays from start to end of the entire recording.
If you want multiple tracks on the CD you need to export each "song" as a separate file - that's when you would use labels and "Export Multiple".

To export a single WAV file, use "File menu > Export".
The file may be exported to anywhere on your computer that you have permission to write, for example in your Documents folder or the Desktop.
After that it's over to CDBurnerXP.