Recording Music From PC Green Speaker Out to Cassette Plyer/Recorder

Hello,

I'm trying to record audio files from my PC to cassette. The files on the PC are mp3s. They are old country songs from 78s. When I connect the PC to the cassette recorder. The recorded sound on the cassette player is to poor to be usable. I've tried using a stereo to mono adapter; no great improvement. I converted the mp3 files to mono; still too little improvement. After experimenting, I found an alternate method. I copy the modified mp3 files to mp3 players. The quality of the recordings are quite good. For some strange reason the RCA mp3 player works better than the ECLIPSE fit clip player.

If anyone has a suggestion for recording directly from the PC I'd appreciate the advice. I'm making the cassettes for my father. He won't use the PC or mp3 player.

Thanks,

Phredtx

Right away I can tell you that a cassette recorder is most likely going to have mono audio for a recorder input. It's been so many years since I messed with cassettes, but there may have well in fact been stereo audio input jacks for cassette recorders as well. Probably the really good home audio equipment et al. I'm thinking the problem isn't whether the audio to the cassette is in stereo or mono output from the computer. It sounds like the issue is over modulation of the PC audio output into the cassette recorder input. If the PC has a line out jack use that instead. Don't use the regular audio output if you can help it. The difference between line in/out and regular audio out is that line in/out is NOT amplified for speakers (line level) where's the normal audio out will be amplified which will cause distortion if you try to record from it. Also, line in/out should be in stereo (I think). If your PC doesn't have line out, what I would do is turn down the PC speaker volume audio out and test at different levels. Consequently, if the cassette recorder has a variable volume input adjustment, use that at a lower volume and experiment.

The other thing is the age or quality of your cassettes. These things can only be played so many times until the audio quality is shot to hell. The biggest was that notorious hiss sound after playing the cassette a hundred times or what ever. If these cassettes are mighty old, I'd look on eBay for brand new if at all possible.

Here's a few:

Fuji DR-I 90 2 packs of 6 | eBay

Sony HF 90 Normal Bias 3x 7 PACK 27242431317 | eBay


(I'd be more apt for these or anything else name brand with high bias).
Fuji DR-II 90 Cassette tapes 3 packs of 5 | eBay


Chose price lowest. "cassette" in All Categories - PicClick

Learn the fine art of snipping. (I use and highly recommend this service. I helped secure his site, actually. Well, kinda sort of I guess. But it's a website that's a LOT safer now then it was. And Mario (the owner) is a pretty cool guy. LOL GIXEN | Free eBay Auction Sniper (Who needs Chinazon)?


Alternative possibilities:

Have you seen these?

Or these? With this, you'd tune to a blank frequency (think something like 88.7 MHz) and on the input side to the device you connect an MP3 player or what ever. The audio will be wirelessly transmitted to the car stereo. (Use the Advanced filtering eBay option for U.S. location only).

F22 Simpilot,

It took a while for me to get back... I got the whole thing workedout;
I switched over to my XP computer. It has a nvidia nForce sound card. I have no problem recording from the headphone jack to the cassette's mic input. I prepare the file with audio editing software on the W7 computer. I combine the songs I want to record into a single file of the needed length, cleanit up as needed and save it in the best reasonable form in mono. I transfer the file via usb stick to the XP and start recording. It beats the hell out of doing one song file at a time. Most of the stuff I'm recording is from 78s from the 1900's through 1950 or so. Most of it was mono to start with... Thanks for the advice!

Phredtx

An Update note:

In case anyone wants to record digital songs from old 78s to a mono "shoebox" cassette player; here's some things I figured out.

First of all; I got hold of a program that provides real time Oscilloscope and Spectrum Analyzer graphics from the sound card. After reading studying some audio engineering stuff, I looked over the spectrums of failed and succesful files.

When the equalizer was set to zero dB for 10Hz to 90Hz, and the dB gradually cut from a Depth of -10dB at 3.8kHz to-48dB at 15.4kHz; nothing above 18kHz.

I am now using a great SANSUI tape deck I bought in Singapore. I had forgot about it. I found it a store room while I was rooting around for something else..... I'm using an ASUS
tablet as the digital source.

Phredtx