Connect your cassette player to your computer
To digitize audio cassettes, you will need a cassette player and a computer.
A laptop PC can do the trick, as long as it has a microphone jack.
Otherwise, an external sound card is required.
If your cassette player is a Hi-Fi system, it may have a jack output.
In this case, a double jack cable is sufficient to connect the output of the Hi-Fi system to the sound card of your computer.
Some cassette players offer an RCA output (the red and white cables).
All you have to do is acquire an RCA-Jack connector to connect the cassette player to the computer's microphone input.
Set up audio recording software
To digitize the sound that is now coming to the computer via the microphone jack, you now need audio recording software.
High performance free software is available.
You can for example try Audacity, available on Windows, Mac and Linux, or Wavosaur (Windows) or the very advanced Linux Multimedia Studio (available on Windows and Linux).
Download one of these software for free and install it.
If your computer does not recognize the incoming audio stream, open the system settings, go to the audio settings and turn on the sound coming in through the microphone jack, if you haven't already.
Digitize the sound of your audio cassettes
Once your cassette player and computer are ready, play back the tape, and start recording on the software you have chosen.
An audio frequency should be displayed, symbolizing the current recording.
Your cassette is being digitized!
Be sure to synchronize the start of recording with the start of the songs.
If you are using one of the recommended software, no need to create a song recording: you can digitize the entire tape, then cut the songs later.
Save as MP3 files
Once the audio content of your cassette has been imported into the software, all you have to do is save it as an MP3.
Cut each song by copying and pasting into a new file, then save it in the audio format of your choice.
The MP3 format is the most efficient on disk space, and is often sufficient to maintain the audio quality of cassettes.
>> To read also:
How to digitize vinyls?