music cassettes to my imac computer

sillav nitram

does anyone know the best way to transfer music cassettes ( before you say it, yeah, i know i'm old ) to my imac computer. is there an economical way of doing this, i'm strapped for cash at the moment, so can't shell out " loads of money " as harry would say.

any info, tips much appreciated.

thanks

Saga Lout

You can buy cassette decks with a usb connection... but that involves shelling out. Alternatively, you may be able to connect you deck to the imac if you have the right lead. I'm not an imac expert, so I don't know what software you'd need to do the actual transfer, but Ken from Bexley may know - he's had macs for years.

uie2

i want to transfer my old tapes to my computer too mate! my songs on tape you cant get on i-tunes!!

Saga Lout

uie2, if you have a line in or microphone input, on your computer you need a lead from your deck and some software - what I use is two utilities I got free with a magazine, they're called "LP Recorder" and "LP Ripper" - I don't know if they're still available, but maybe there are some modern equivalents.

paulbaconsarnie

have you searched on youtube for the music you have on cassette?

if it's on there, then i think you can get a free download to convert to mp3.

EastTerrace

Audacity is a common free software that you can download for Mac OSX. It can be a bit fiddly at first but you get used to it, I've
used Audacity for Tapes and Vinyl.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/beta_mac

Follow the link for instructions to record, although they're quite detailed. There are probably more concise ones on the Audacity site.

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=Transferring_tapes_and_records_to_computer_or_CD


Seems like you can do it with just a stereo lead from your line out or maybe headphone socket on your to the line in on the mac (although you may have change your audio settings in your System Prefs).

I've used this as a midway point (instead of a stereo lead @ about £30) and got quite good results:

http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/UFO202.aspx

I'm only a beginner on this kind of thing though and imagine there are better ways out there.

ken from bexley

/forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=250162

Good forum, never tried this my friend has been converting his entire Vinyl library to cd and mac.

I have a whole library of stuff on tape, so would be interested if you could do this.... 

Sorry I cannot be more helpful, must be a way, pity I am not at the bbc they had a guy who used to do conversion of everything to different formats.

Good luck anyway 

sillav nitram

thanks for the info so far fellas.

has anyone tried " ion tape express " it's only around £35 so seems fairly cheap and has some good reviews but have any of you guys actually got one and willing to put everything you own, wife, mistress, kids, home and yer mother in law on it, as a recommendation ?

paulbaconsarnie

my usb turntable is an ion.

probably the cheapest out there but have had no problems using it.

mrbligh

you can do it. you need one of these http://www.audiospares.com/product.php?productid=1273 (phono to mini jack leads) stick the phono end in your cassette player the mini jack in the back of your mac. open up garageband, in garageband's preferences set the audio input to 'built in input.' then open an audio track in garageband, hit record enable, hit record, play your tape, voila! 

once the tapes finished, you need to stop garageband recording and 'bounce' the recording down to mp3, let me know if you need any help, i can walk you through that aswell

sillav nitram

thanks fellas.

i'm gonna take a look at the options posted on here in the next few days and see what appears to be the right direction to take. i'll let you know how i get on. thanks once again.