The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
I have large collection of audio casettes, I'm looking for the way to digitize them preserving relatively good audio quality, and being home-budgeted in the same time.
I've thought about connecting the casette player through mini-jack audio to laptop (microphone plug) and playing the casettes, recording audio in the same time on laptop. But is that the best way to preserve audio quality?
Another topic is speed, this would take about 1 hour to digitize 1 casette, changing the side after \~30 minutes. I wonder if there are devices specialized for digitizing casettes, possibly having own storage or connected through USB cable, being able to digitize with faster speed than normal playing? Are such devices affordable for home user?
What"s the best way to digitize my collection?
lechlukasz
There are actually devices that can digitize your cassettes at a faster rate (up to 8x), but they're generally quite expensive: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=562786&Q=&is=REG&A=details
The alternative would be to do exactly what you describe: hook up a cassette player to your computer, and use recording software (like Audacity) to save the audio.
Just make sure that you have a good-quality cassette player, and a good-quality cable. On the player, make sure to turn up the volume as high as possible, but check that it doesn't clip the audio.