How To Rip Tapes To MP3
I was going through some old things at my mother’s house recently when I came across a couple of old audio cassette tapes from my brother’s old band circa 1988 & 1989. I was glad to have found them and decided I should rip them to MP3s so I can listen to the tracks on my phone from anywhere until the novelty wore off. But before I could I had to figure out exactly how. With minimal help I was able to work it out. Here’s how.
The first step was to connect my tape deck to the line-in jack on my computer. This necessitated an RCA to mini jack converter cable which I actually had already. Alternatively there are newer tape decks made with a USB connector.
Next I fired up Audacity. Audacity is a must have for the amateur audio editor. There are versions for Windows, Mac and Linux. To actually capture the audio to the computer you’ll need to play the tape from the deck and record it in Audacity. The Devices screen in Preferences allows you to point Audacity to your tape deck so it can ‘hear’ what’s playing on it.
To record the audio in Audacity press play on the tape deck while the pause button is engaged. Click the record button in Audacity then release the pause button on the tape deck. Let the whole side of the tape record then press stop in Audacity. You may want to try a couple of test recordings of smaller audio clips from your cassette to be sure things are working ok before recording the whole side of the tape. Also remember to set any noise reduction and tape type settings on your tape deck that may be needed to get the best playback for the type of cassette tape you’re playing.
Once recording is complete you’ll want to maximize the volume of the recording. Just as in the old analog days it is possible to raise the volume to the point where the recording gets distorted. Luckily Audacity includes a tool that automatically sets the volume level to the highest setting possible without the audio distorting. To use it select the whole recording (CTRL-A in Windows) then go to the Effects menu and click Amplify. The highest setting is selected by default so all you need to do here is click the OK button.
The next step it to mark where the tracks begin and delete the slack silence at the end of the recording (if any). Click the location in the Audacity window where the first track begins. Now go to the Tracks menu and select Add Label at Selection. Enter the track number and click OK. Repeat this for all the tracks in the recording. When you’ve labeled all the tracks click after the last track and drag the cursor over the remainder of the audio track. Then hit the delete key to remove this extraneous silence.
Finally we’re ready to export the audio. Go to Export Multiple from the File menu. Select MP3 from the Export Format drop down and select a target location to save your MP3s. (It may be necessary to install the LAME DLL to save to MP3. Audacity will instruct you how to do this if you need it.) For each of the tracks enter the appropriate data for each tag. Once you’ve entered all the data the export will begin and you’ll end up with MP3s with filenames of the track number (1.mp3, 2.mp3, etc.).
It’s important to remember that your final MP3 will sound no better than the source tape. This is how I ended up with MP3s that include the old hiss you get on audio tape.
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