[SOLVED] Has anyone had success with transferring cassette content using Windows 11 Media Player ?

[Wolkie 72]

I have downloaded Audacity, and have the basic instructions from them, but W11 is not recognizing the tape unit I plugged in directly via both ports. Is there a way to work around this? Thanks

 

[Ralston18]

And remember that there are different 3.5 mm plug and port configurations (TS, TRS, TRRS).

FYI:

https://www.cablechick.com.au/blog/understanding-trrs-and-audio-jacks/

Ensure that the connections match and are consistent.

 

[gardenman]

No idea if this will be helpful or not. This is for Win 10 but might work as well in Win 11.

"...I have an AGPtek USB Portable Cassette To MP3 Converter but when I plug in to my laptop, my Windows 10 does not recognize that it is even plugged in..."

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...-10-when/dc64e460-da38-4fda-9408-de27833c116e

 

[Wolkie 72]

With "Hat in hand" and eyes cast downward in shame, I come to you all once again with what I hope is a problem easily solved. DWD999, I watched the video you included, and even though I went back to audacity (tried Goldwave) after watching it, (and getting all of the settings as the publisher of the video you included), I prepared myself for recording my cassette content.

{IMPORTANT NOTE]....Due to my wife's recent hospitalization, I was unable to start my project until last Monday.

What *isn't* working are the vertical lines which track left to right as the cassette plays. I can see the volume on the smaller channels above the layout, just can't see the music registering on those vertical lines. I checked my recording settings and I have the correct setting: Microphone Array (2-USB PnP Audio Device).

I stopped there, thinking I had better contact my friends here to see if there's a setting I am missing.

So if you will excuse my intrusion once more, could you help me with this one?

Thanks

Bill

 

[gardenman]

It's difficult to understand exactly what you are talking about. Take a screen shot, edit it in paint if needed (add arrows to point at what you are talking about). Then post it on imgur.com and link to it here.

It sounds like the you are not getting any input. If so, the "device" isn't working right. Or a volume level is down too low, or muted. Or the input is not selected right.

Right click on the speak icon and go to "Sounds". Go to the Recording tab. Check the levels in there on the device (Click device, Properties button, Level tab).

 

[dwd999]

What *isn't* working are the vertical lines which track left to right as the cassette plays. I can see the volume on the smaller channels above the layout, just can't see the music registering on those vertical lines. I checked my recording settings and I have the correct setting: Microphone Array (2-USB PnP Audio Device).

I stopped there, thinking I had better contact my friends here to see if there's a setting I am missing.

So if you will excuse my intrusion once more, could you help me with this one?

Thanks

Bill

Audacity can be a little quirky to set up. You have to cycle through the 3 Hosts listed in the Audio Setup tab to figure out which one will work for you based on your computer's sound driver. For me, the Windows WASAPI host is the one which works on my equipment. Try all 3 Hosts to see which one works; if you press the red Record button and get an error message, then try the other ones.

 

[Wolkie 72]

Audacity can be a little quirky to set up. You have to cycle through the 3 Hosts listed in the Audio Setup tab to figure out which one will work for you based on your computer's sound driver. For me, the Windows WASAPI host is the one which works on my equipment. Try all 3 Hosts to see which one works; if you press the red Record button and get an error message, then try the other ones.

Got it figured out. The record volume (the mic icon at the top) was set too low, but now some distortion is keeping me from getting a good quality recording. There's hum and a continuous and soft "pop-pop-pop" all the way through. It isn't the cassette, because I tried other cassettes and get the same noises.

Is there a noise reduction program I can download which will get me a clean recorded mp3?

And thank you, dwd999 for helping me with this!

EDITED TO ADD: Unplugged the tape player and walked with it and headphones AWAY into the next room, and the hum and soft continuous pops stopped, so I guess it's my rig that's causing the problem, dwd. Still, is there anything that can be done to stop this? Just a personal comment: I don't know what I would do without all of you! Thanks so very much!

 

[dwd999]

Got it figured out. The record volume (the mic icon at the top) was set too low, but now some distortion is keeping me from getting a good quality recording. There's hum and a continuous and soft "pop-pop-pop" all the way through. It isn't the cassette, because I tried other cassettes and get the same noises.

Is there a noise reduction program I can download which will get me a clean recorded mp3?

And thank you, dwd999 for helping me with this!

EDITED TO ADD: Unplugged the tape player and walked with it and headphones AWAY into the next room, and the hum and soft continuous pops stopped, so I guess it's my rig that's causing the problem, dwd. Still, is there anything that can be done to stop this? Just a personal comment: I don't know what I would do without all of you! Thanks so very much!

Maybe longer cables or something metal to shield the tape player. Is your computer properly grounded to deter interference?

 

[COLGeek]

Maybe longer cables or something metal to shield the tape player. Is your computer properly grounded to deter interference?

This seems more like a grounding issue than RFI/EMI. Poor cables/connectors could contribute to these issues.

I would not use the typical front panel audio ports to connect these devices for that reason.

 

[Wolkie 72]

I was wondering too, if I could download an older copy of audacity? Hopefully that will help with the noise as well.

 

[35below0]

I was wondering too, if I could download an older copy of audacity? Hopefully that will help with the noise as well.

Right here: https://www.fosshub.com/Audacity-old.html

 

[Wolkie 72]

Thank you very much. Family emergency has kept me away from my project for a few days, but I'll report back asap.

 

[Satan-IR]

Sorry did't go through every single posts but my 2 cents.

If memory serves right back on Windows 7 when you wanted to record something with Audacity that was being played back on Windows (by any media player) you had to set the Audio Host to Windows WASAPI. Not sure if this still applies in Win 11.

Generally to reduce the constant hissing on recording and playback you can lower the equalizer sliders on 6Khz and 12Khz range a bit and play with it until you find the sweet spot. Not to make it too neither dull nor hissy.

Also if the cassette player has not been used for long it might not be a bad idea to clean the player head with some Q-tip and a little rubbing alcohol.

As for pops and noise interferene in recording if the cable that goes from cassette player to USB on computer has no ferrite core you can add one to the cable and see if that helps reduce noise on recording. They come in differnt sizes and easily fit to cables with the clasps they have.

Something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Ferrite-Core-Cord-Noise-Suppressor/dp/B01JMTCC5U

Also if possible try connecting the casette player (if powered from mains) and computer from a different outlet in a different room. Sometimes that improves things as in less interference.

All that said, professional audio playback and recording devices have high quality components (such as high quality capacitors, noise filters, EMI filters and such), high quality wiring (electric and audio cables) etc. The humming might just be inherent as that's the maximum quality the player can produce and transfer to computer.

Wish your wife a speedy recovery and you good luck with your project.

 

[Wolkie 72]

I managed to reduce the soft popping noise by laying the little tape player on the rubber portion of an old mousepad, so I guess it needed "grounding".

My thanks once again for all the assistance and now that we're home, I can start over and pay a little closer attention to what I'm doing.

Bill

 

[dos_box]

Something to mention here, that really good unsolicited advice.

Even if you get the proper cabling the conversion is going to be a very very poor representation of the audio. Bitrate and so forth will basically be non-existent. Unless this is treasured archive audio there is very little point in not trying to find a remixed/modernized version if such is possible of the source.

Also keep in mind that cassette tapes had a thing about getting sticky when they got old, building up on the head while physically destroying the tape. If this is particularly important to you, and with that possibility in mind, you might want to consider a professional service and/or limiting the number of times you run this tape without capture.

Good luck.

Personally I have good experiences with recording Tapes on Audacity and saving them in the lossless flac format. But that was analog-recording. And I can say the flacs sound pretty good, even though the tapes were quite old and had some damaged parts, which I was able to cut out. So it's not too bad and can sound pretty good (even without pro-service), provided the proper settings are used. Bit-Rate wise and codec wise.
I don't know for USB however. I read the device is with including software, why not try that?

 

[Wolkie 72]

Punkncat, so you choose flac lossless instead of mp3? I'll try that with the next recording (which I do at night, since they're 90 minute cassettes and I am not sure if I can control recording speed or leave it and go elsewhere on the net). I don't like to mess with too much that I have to remember - that dashboard looked scary as heck the first time I saw it, and I now know just enough to set volume and use export to save.

Thanks again to everyone!

 

[dwd999]

Punkncat, so you choose flac lossless instead of mp3? I'll try that with the next recording (which I do at night, since they're 90 minute cassettes and I am not sure if I can control recording speed or leave it and go elsewhere on the net). I don't like to mess with too much that I have to remember - that dashboard looked scary as heck the first time I saw it, and I now know just enough to set volume and use export to save.

Setting the volume isn't critical as long as you don't set it too high. Its best to set the volume lower so that you don't oversaturate and distort the recording. You set the volume lower and after recording is complete you just use the menu Effect, Volume and Compression, Normalize to raise the volume to the maximum level the software allows.

 

[Wolkie 72]

I am learning a lot (more than I thought!) about audacity. Such as minimizing it and going to my e-mail. Does it stop recording? Apparently not because when I maximize it again, there it is, still faithfully recording my music.

I read up on that, and the audacity forum tells me that if the sound settings are low enough then it might "forget" and stop recording. That hasn't happened.

Also, does it do me any good to do a pre-export before recording and naming the music? I still get mixed up when I get told it's an audacity "project" until I change it to export.

Also, once I get a cassette recorded, I can never remember how to find it again. It doesn't show under media player, but does under the audacity file.

I don't want to bang my head against a dead horse, but I sure do appreciate your patience with this "old fart". I don't know how to vote best answer, so I just like all of them.

Thanks again!

Bill

 

[dwd999]

I am learning a lot (more than I thought!) about audacity. Such as minimizing it and going to my e-mail. Does it stop recording? Apparently not because when I maximize it again, there it is, still faithfully recording my music.

I read up on that, and the audacity forum tells me that if the sound settings are low enough then it might "forget" and stop recording. That hasn't happened.

Also, does it do me any good to do a pre-export before recording and naming the music? I still get mixed up when I get told it's an audacity "project" until I change it to export.

Also, once I get a cassette recorded, I can never remember how to find it again. It doesn't show under media player, but does under the audacity file.

If you click on the menu Edit, Preferences, Recording you will see 2 options to avoid: the Detect Dropouts box should be UNchecked and the Sound Activated Recording option does not have to be used. The software will continue recording until you manually stop it.

All you need to do when you're finished recording and editing is use the menu File, Export Audio option and your music will be saved. The default format is .WAV which is the universal uncompressed format for computers. If those files are too large for you and/or you want to load them onto a portable media player device you can always convert them to smaller .MP3 files later. Or you can save them in any .MP3 or other format you may want.

If you use the menu Edit, Preferences, Directories you will be able to Export all your music to whatever special folder you create for it so you will always be able to find your files.

 

[dos_box]

Punkncat, so you choose flac lossless instead of mp3? I'll try that with the next recording (which I do at night, since they're 90 minute cassettes and I am not sure if I can control recording speed or leave it and go elsewhere on the net). I don't like to mess with too much that I have to remember - that dashboard looked scary as heck the first time I saw it, and I now know just enough to set volume and use export to save.

Thanks again to everyone!

Flac is defenitely better. Even if you want to make them mp3 in the end, the flac will be a good master recording from which you can work, since lossless.

 

[35below0]

I don't know how to vote best answer, so I just like all of them.

There should be a checkmark on the right side of the post, or below it:

Info - How to mark posts as Solved/Award Best Answer

If you are the starter of a thread, and wish to mark the post of the person who helped you the most as the best solution, here is how to do it: if you are on PC, there is a tick mark to the right of their post in the forums (see below) If you are on mobile, the tick appears below the posts...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Satan-IR]

I am learning a lot (more than I thought!) about audacity. Such as minimizing it and going to my e-mail. Does it stop recording? Apparently not because when I maximize it again, there it is, still faithfully recording my music.

I read up on that, and the audacity forum tells me that if the sound settings are low enough then it might "forget" and stop recording. That hasn't happened.

Also, does it do me any good to do a pre-export before recording and naming the music? I still get mixed up when I get told it's an audacity "project" until I change it to export.

Also, once I get a cassette recorded, I can never remember how to find it again. It doesn't show under media player, but does under the audacity file.

I don't want to bang my head against a dead horse, but I sure do appreciate your patience with this "old fart". I don't know how to vote best answer, so I just like all of them.

Thanks again!

Bill

From my own experiene when you want to Export as MP3 specially when the recording source is not very high quality and the frequency range might drift choosing Constant as the Bitrate Mode results in a more homogenous output. I mean the content on the resulting MP3 doesn't sound like the volume slider is jumping up and down.

Also if the recordings are long (larger data, therefore, large files) when exporting as MP3 choosing the 320Kbps quality/bitrate (although better quality) results in very large files. The standard if you want reasonably-sized files is 128 Kbps, with less quality/data as 320 but smaller files. I personally this 192 Kbps is the sweet spot and the compromise between file size and sound quality.

If you want to export as WAV I would choose 32-bit float as the Encoding option. If I'm not mistaken that's what Audacity uses internally so by choosing that there would be no quality loss occuring due to conversions between the 'encoding' types.

Although I don't think all devices (playback) expect and support that (32-bit float). It can be a limiting factor if you want to play the WAV file on some other devices such as phones, portable players , smart TVs etc.

Some apps might not be able to play that internally, with their own built-in player. I know iOS WhatsApp (iPhones etc) and on Android devices does play WAV files with 32-bit float encoding. Also VLC Media player on iOS does play back. Some others might not.

 

[Wolkie 72]

Again, my sincere thanks to everyone. I did create a "Save As" file called "Cassettes" and the same for "Export" (to "Cassettes")

Something you all might want to know: some of my 90 minute cassettes are TDK's and were first recorded in 1984. They sound fine.

I'm getting it...slowly but surely, and ALL of you are the reason!

Edited To Add: Do I have to record at normal speed? I see a slider down at the bottom, but was afraid to mess with it.

 

[Wolkie 72]

Starting Over. Good that I have only done 3 of these, but I am still having trouble finding them after the record process. Could it be that I am looking for them in the wrong place? I have media player AND media player Legacy.

When I finish I try to locate it under file name "Cassettes", but I am goofing up somewhere. I find the files when I look for them on the W11 "search" section (at the bottom with the window). Just enter "Music 19" for example, and there it is. Plays back fine, so do I *always* have to look for my recordings there?
I was thinking everything should be under file name "Cassettes".

Also dummy me, I kept wondering why I wasn't getting the volume I should be, and then the penny dropped, and I saw that I needed to turn the volume up on the little tape player.

Right now, I am on my Pink Floyd Collection, and it is recording correctly. When I stop is where I get into trouble, I think. If you all haven't completely given up on me, can you tell me what my next steps should be?

My wife is resting well, thanks, and I am only steps away from her should she need me, so all is well, and she appreciates your concern, as do I.

 

[dwd999]

Edited To Add: Do I have to record at normal speed? I see a slider down at the bottom, but was afraid to mess with it.

The slider on the bottom is for Playback speed and only functions when playing back your recordings.

If you use the menu Edit, Preferences, Directories you will be able to set the default folder to Export all your music to whatever special folder you create for it so you will always be able to find your files.

If you use the menu File, Export Audio the dialog box will open and the second item Folder will allow you to choose where your music is saved. When using Windows media players you need to Organize your Libraries to include whatever folder your music files are stored in.

 

[Wolkie 72]

That's what I was missing. I'm so sorry, dwd999, I know you have already answered this, and I am sure you have better things to do than to guide me with something I would have been able to do 5 years ago.

I set the Edit, Preferences, Directories after the recording is done, right? And THEN return to File, Export Audio and choose the folder? Then the whole thing goes to media player for Library Organizing.

I am making notes, so when I get it right, I am hoping the rinse, repeat cycle will lodge it in what is left of my brain.