Convert a cassette tape recording to digital format

Has anyone been successful with transferring audio cassette tape recordings to a digital format? I would like to preserve old cassette tape recordings of my grandparents to some digital format: MP3, WAV, etc... The quality of the tapes are mediocre. I think I can handle the quality restoration but getting the audio from tape to digital is my question.

Below is a list of the hardware that I can work with:

Cassette Deck: I have a Technics stereo cassette deck model RS-B12. It has separate left and right IN and OUT RCA type jacks on the back. In the front it has a headphone phono jack, plus left and right mic input phono jacks.

On the computer side: -I have a Windows Vista PC with no additional software other than what came with the machine from Costco. No sound editing software that I can see. There is no sound card on the PC. On the front panel there is a mini-phono mic input jack and there are several different types of in/out mini-phono jacks on the back. In addition, USB and Firewire.

I also have access to a new (2009) iMac with a mini-phono input jack for a powered mic or other audio source and GarageBand that has come with the computer. In addition, USB and Firewire.

What are my options for getting these cassette recordings into a digital format? Whats the best format? What sort of wires would I need and will I want to utilize the USB or Firewire or can I simply use the audio inputs on the PC (or Mac) to receive the audio stream?

Solution 1:

Use a 3.5 mm stereo-to-RCA cable from the RCA out of the cassette tape deck to the Line In jack of the sound card.

Select Line In as source for your recordings.

Then grab Audacity and record/cut your tapes. Keep the the results in a lossless format (e.g. WAV - or compressed as Monkey's Audio or FLAC to save space) for further processing before converting to MP3.

Note: Audacity requires the LAME MP3 Encoder for MP3 conversion.

Note: This would not be a fully digital remaster as you're still using an analog tape player.

Solution 2:

I used a Roland Edirol UA-25 to interface the cassette deck of my stereo to my computer (Mac), but only because I had one (Musician). I could have just as easily have done it using the line in on the standard sound card (usually the blue jack).

I recorded using Audacity to record the audio and also do some post processing. However I could not get it completely hiss free as they were very old recordings of a relative who had passed away, so there was no way to reproduce it.

Fortunately, I work for a very large media company in the UK and their sound department did an amazing job of reading the audio I had recorded and removing more noise than I could possibly using the equipment I had. Admittedly, the sound studios contain millions of £ worth of sound processing hardware and I was very lucky to get this done for free.

If you can afford to get a professional to do this then the reproduction should be much better than you could do on home equipment.

Solution 3:

My low-tech solution would be to plug the RCA cables into the microphone port on the computer using an adapter, and then using GoldWave / Audacity to record the input. The format of the sound is then up to you.