what software transfer cassette tapes to disks?
Does Apple support software to transfer cassette tapes to CDs?
Two dead media formats.
You need an analog to digital converter hardware and most of those products also include some software options.
9 replies
If they weren't dead formats, they wouldn’t need to transfer it! 😝
An iMic ought to work for most purposes. Affordable.
Last version I’d gotten didn’t include software, however.
Audacity is free.
As mentioned, an iMic should work - I've used one for some time (plus the cables to connect your CD player/radio to the iMic and that, in turn to a USB port on your Mac). You will need software - I use Sound Studio ($$); it works fine. You will need to make a choice if you want every song separately (more work as you will have to start/stop to keep them individually) or it will simply record the whole thing. In that case, you can go through and separate them afterwards (I've done that in Sound Studio), but it is tedious.
Another idea: rather than burn them to a CD, you could also just keep the then digitized files on an external hard drive for future use.
No modern company has made an audio file to cassette tape in 5 years and they are not a digital format. They are an analog signal that need to be converted to digital formats.
Software is not the issue here.
Thank you. You clearly know what you are doing. However, my problem is that I am a very old Mac user (since the first one in 1984), and I have tape cassettes of voices of my family, most all now gone. The information I found online about digital converter hardware shows me that managing them is way over my head.
I will look in my city for some tech company which may offer this service. Thanks again.
iMic is inexpensive & direct. (Around $35?) There are probably others.
Basically an iMic is a hockey puck sized device with some ⅛” jacks that end in a USB connection for the computer side.
Play your audio or music into the device off whatever tape deck you have & the “puck" interfaces to the computer.
You might need a “Y” connector with RCA phono connections going to ⅛” plug from tape deck to the iMic. That’s probably $4.
What you do for software need not be complex. In its simplest form, you play at normal speed & record to the computer using the software.
In that scenario, pretty much any recording software could work (the source line IN is set in System Preferences > Sound > input tab). Several could work. You could probably use GarageBand or other software that you may already own, as well. Or try Audacity. You can always pull a copy of that to experiement with other, less important audio files.
If you have more money than time, or are concerned about damaging your tapes, sending them out can be just fine.
So long as you have a good clean player, its not anything challenging.
The only thing you might be concerned about, if you decide to transfer them yourself - is not redline the recording side. While you could tape “hot” with top quality tapes when it involved music, for instance, its not a good idea in the digital world.
Fixing distorted audio or music on the digital end is ugly. So just watch your peak levels indicators to be sure.
Or you get fancy software that adjusts it all for you into an ideal range.
I assume you aren’t doing this on a 1st generation Mac! 🙂
Let us know how it works out for you, whatever you decide!
Using the iMic is really easy - I've had a company digitize an old music tape onto a CD; they cleaned up some of the background scratchy noise, which was great - it was rather pricey though (this was worth it because it was of my late father),. FWIW, they will not do commercial recordings (copyright issues), but that isn't what you want to copy, so that isn't a problem.
what software transfer cassette tapes to disks?