Cassette to mp3 conversion (1 Viewer)

[Ficedula]

I hope to find time to convert all my bird recordings to digital format, probably mp3. I found this which seems to explain how to do it but thought i would seek advice from anyone who has done this. Any recommended software (ideally free!) and any potential pitfalls I should be aware of?

 

[temmie]

I do it by connecting a 3.5mm plug from the earphone entrance of the walkman to the 3.5mm of the 'line' entrance of my solid state sound recorder (tascam). A dictaphone would be OK/nice, too. Just play the cassette, and push the record button. After the cassette has finished (45minutes or so), connect the digital sound recorder to your computer, and start cutting and editing the full mp3 recording into usable pieces of mp3 file for each bird.
I use the (not free, about 20$) magic audio editor pro, but I would check dbpoweramp (free) and audacity (free), which imho are as good or better.

 

[Ficedula]

thanks temmie, not got a solid state sound recorder and not sure i can justfy getting one.

 

[Mono]

If you use Audacity you can just use a jack to jack lead to plug a walkman into your PCs line in and record it direcy onto the PC, then cut it up and save the indivdual sections.

 

[Birdingcraft]

Here is what I did:

Plugged my Sennheiser microphone into the mic jack of my PC and used a sound recording program found in windows accessories.

These are recorded as WAV files. To convert them, I used free WAV to MP3 software (you may have to search a bit for this on the web).

Sound isnt as good but come out alright if you soundproof the surroundings a bit.

 

[pdh]

@Ficedula:

the article you link to explains it well enough, and Mono's suggestion of Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) is a good one. Audacity is very very good AND free.

I've connected my hifi cassette player to an old laptop with a £1.99 lead and used Audacity to convert many of my old music tapes to .WAV format for burning onto CDs for the car; but for your iPod (or whatever) there is an extra plugin for Audacity you'll need to download I think to convert to .MP3, but that's free as well.

using an external mic comes with the added potential problem of extraneous sounds being introduced. Much better to use a direct transfer method.

hope this helps

 

[Keith Dickinson]

I'll second Mono's technique and also add to the recommendation for Audacity as the program to use.. Don't bother using a mike it's so cr@p that it might as well be white noise.

 

[Ficedula]

thanks all for advice, I have downloaded Audacity but yet to use it, a winter job for me.:t: