Trying to record from a cassette player

pooksahib · 29 Jan 2010

Hi. I have a piece of audio on cassette tape that I want to email to someone. So I want to record it using my PC - nothing fancy, doesn't need to be high-end hi-fi quality. I plan to use the cable connecting my PC to the 'line in' socket of my monitor. I've switched the jack from the green socket of the PC to the blue socket (which should be 'line in' right?). And I've taken the jack from my monitor and plugged it into the headphone socket of my portable cassette player.

As far as I know, there should now be a signal going from the cassette player into the sound card? Unfortunately, the two sound recorders I've tried (Audacity and Arial) have completely blank spaces when I click on 'select input device'.

Can anyone tell me where I'm going wrong? Thanks in advance.

fireberd · 29 Jan 2010

I'm don't know why you are trying to input the signal at the monitor. You need to be connecting to the "line in" jack on the PC (or if it's just a mono signal you can use the Mic jack input).

If you do not have the "System Mixer" option and have it selected, you will have to select the Recording input in the Control Panel/Hardware and Sounds/Sound Panel. You should then be able to select an input device in Audacity or whatever you want to use.

pooksahib · 29 Jan 2010

I'm not inputting the signal at the monitor. I just thought I'd mention that I'm trying to use the cable which ordinarily feeds sound to my monitor. I have three sockets on the back of my PC - pink, green and blue. The cable jack is normally in the green with the other jack in my monitor. I've taken the monitor jack out and plugged it into the headphone socket of a portable cassette player. I've then (on the back of the PC) taken the other jack put of the green and plugged it into the blue. I had hoped that this would allow me to record from the cassette player. As mentioned above, 2 pieces of recording software can't find an input device. (I've also tried using the pink (microphone in) socket on the back of the PC - no luck.

As for Control Panel, I do not have 'Hardware and Sounds/Sound Panel'. All I have is 'Sound' which has four tabs - Playback, Recording, Sounds and Communications. Under 'Recording' it says 'no audio devices are installed'. Any idea what this means? I must have some kind of audio device if I can play music and video files on my PC...

Once again, any suggestions as to how I make a recording from this cassette tape would be greatly appreciated.

Update. I've just tried a third piece of recording software - VinylStudio. It's error message is "There are no audio drivers installed on this machine or all audio devices are disabled". I've gone into System Information and for Sound Device it says:
Name - High Definition Audio Device (Digital Audio S/PDIF)
Manufacturer - Microsoft
Status - OK
PNP Device ID - HDAUDIO\FUNC_ blah blah blah
Driver - c:\windows\system32\drivers blah blah blah

I'm really confused by all this. My PC plays sounds so what do I need to be able to record sounds? Thanks again.

pooksahib · 29 Jan 2010

I think I see the issue. I'd given up for the night and plugged my monitor back in as normal. Suddenly, I have recording options. So it appears I won't be able to record unless my 'sound in' and 'sound out' are both wired up (if that makes sense). Looks like I'll have to acquire another cable with mini-jacks either end...