Preserving Old Recordings Techniques for Digitizing Vinyl Records and Cassette Tapes

How-To Geek

If you have some old cassette tapes lying around, it's a good idea to digitize and back them up before they decide to show their age and stop working. In this guide, we'll show how to convert your old collections to digital files, and the best practices for doing so.

Image by cassettes.

What You'll Need

The media - You'll obviously need a cassette or some variation (micro cassette, etc). There are definitely some albums in circulation that were only ever released on cassettes, but, when possible, ripping a CD is going to produce far better results. If you need to rip an old cassette from an answering machine or handheld recorder, this is the ideal guide for you. Keep in mind that the more you play a tape, the more its signal is degraded. Tapes are especially susceptible to heat, dirt, and magnetism, so get them converted while you can.

A decent playback device

Photo by Pete.

Ideally, you'll want to use a high-quality tape deck. Those things are hard to come by nowadays, so you may have to settle for just about any cassette player you can get your hands on. Since they're rarely produced now, you may find an old one that has seen better days. Just make sure that it doesn't have any playback problems before you begin. To test, make sure that there is no media currently in the player, plug in some head phones, and press play. Listen for static or other strange sounds - every sound that the player makes in this process will be recorded into your digital file. As long as you hear minimal noise (the less, the better), it should work fine.

An appropriate sound card - You don't need anything fancy, you just need to have a microphone jack on your computer.

Anything produced within the last few years should support stereo input at the same quality level as CDs. To check, navigate in Windows to:

Control Panel > Sound > Recording > Right click Microphone > Properties > Advanced:

An environment free from electrical noise - Recording cassettes is an analog process, so any interference from nearby electronics is picked up and recorded as audio. Popping sounds and static are common in recordings that were done with their audio cable near power or RF sources. To test the amount of noise your environment is producing, make sure there is no tape in your player, plug it into your computer, and start recording. Listen for sounds other than the normal humming that playing a tape always produces to assess whether or not your other electronics are causing interference.

How to Start Recording

Now that you've got everything you need to get started, pop your cassette into the player and plug it into your computer. Lower quality devices will require you to use the headphone jack, but better devices will be equipped with a line out jack, which is what you'll want to use if you have it.

For line out, use a cable with two RCA jacks on one end and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the other.

If you're using a device that only has a 3.5mm headphone jack, use a cable with the 3.5mm plug on both ends.

With your cassette player plugged into your computer, open the program you plan to use for the recording. In this guide, we'll be working with Audacity. Click that link to head over to their website and download the program. Once Audacity has been installed, open it up and adjust the following settings:

Also, turn the input volume all the way up:

With those settings configured, you can go ahead and press record.

Right after that, hit the play button on your tape player.

Now, you must wait for the duration of your tape. If you accidentally go a bit over without pressing stop, it's no big deal because we can cut out the excess later. After your tape is done playing, hit the stop button and we'll begin to process the recording.

You will undoubtedly have at least a couple seconds of excess noise at the beginning and end of your recording, so highlight that section (just drag your cursor across that area) and hit delete.

In the screenshot above, you can see we have a little more than a second of unnecessary noise (the time it took for us to hit play on the tape deck after we hit record in Audacity). The darker gray area is what we've highlighted and plan to delete. Repeat this process for the end of your recording until you've gotten rid of all the excess noise.

After you've trimmed the excess and ensured that you got a quality recording (just hit play to hear what you've got), you can save the data into an audio file, such as MP3. Just go to File > Export to be presented with all the formats that you can save your data in.

To compress your file into a reasonable size but still retain the maximum quality, select FLAC. For maximum compatibility and more compression, while still retaining a very reasonable amount of quality, select MP3.

For a full rundown on the differences between these file types, we've written a guide that covers all the different kinds of audio formats. Once your data is exported, you can play back your file anytime you want in your favorite media player (or on your phone, etc).

How to digitize all your VHS and cassette tapes

If your media collection stretches back before the digital age, you may have wondered how to transform your VHS and cassette tapes into formats stored on a laptop or tablet. This article is here to guide you through that process.

Its not too time-consuming or complicated, and following these steps will ensure your home movies, video tape collection, and rare audio tracks can be preserved for years to come.

The hardware you need

First of all, youre going to need something to play the old tapes youve got. If youve long since got rid of your cassette or VHS player, youll have to head to eBay or Craigslist to try and pick up a second-hand one. The good news is you shouldnt have to pay much for it.

Do the usual due diligence here. Check the listing photos for signs of wear and tear, and make sure youre buying from sellers with a good reputation.

If you buy an old tape player or youve still got one in the attic, check its outputs. Typically youll see a composite video output (denoted by a round yellow socket) paired with a stereo audio output (round white and red sockets). You might see a S-Video output (a round black socket with four pins) instead of composite video output. In the case of cassette players youll of course just be dealing with audiocheck for stereo audio output ports or, at the very least, a headphone jack.

Its then a question of converting these outputs into inputs your computer can handle, and for that its best to use a dedicated converting device.

The DIGINOW Video Capture ($24 on Amazon), for example, can take S-Video or composite video as well as stereo audio and convert it into a stream thats delivered over a standard USB-A socket. The Roxio Easy VHS to DVD ($40 on Amazon) does the same job for significantly less cash.

If youre dealing with audio only, then something like the Ugreen USB External Stereo Sound Card ($16 on Amazon) is a good bet. It pushes stereo audio RCA outputs into digital files via USB. The VTop Digital Audio Capture Card ($18 on Amazon) works with cassette players that have stereo audio and 3.5mm headphone jack outputs. You can also buy all-in-one devices that play cassettes and convert the output into USB format, like the Reshow Cassette Player ($19 on Amazon).

Essentially, you need a box or an adapter that converts your players outputs into a computer-friendly USB form. If youre on a USB-C only laptop, another dongle might be needed to complete the chain. Youre then ready to connect up your devices and start recording.

The software you need

Many of the video capture and conversion devices mentioned above come with their own software, which you can use to convert video stream coming into your computer over USB and saving it as a digital video.

Youll need to play, convert, and record the footage in real time, so if you dont want to take a trip down memory lane and watch through all your VHS tapes again, take comfort knowing you can do something else while your computers working. All you really need to do is press the start recording and stop recording buttons.

Full instructions should come with whatever device youve bought, though for illustration purposes well walk you through the process with the Roxio Easy VHS to DVD package, which sends captured video straight to a DVD disc. Click Record DVD on the opening splash screen, cue up the VHS on the video player, then click Start recording. When youre done, click Stop recording.

If you dont find any software bundled with your capture device, or you want to use something different, then commercial packages like Adobe Premiere Elements ($100 from Amazon) will do the joband give you a host of editing effects and tools to play around with at the same time.

Debut Video Capture ($25 from NCH Software, with a free trial available) is a simpler, cheaper option as well. Like the Adobe option, its available for Windows and macOS. There are no options that are both free and reliable, so its worth buying a capture device that you know has software bundled with it.

When it comes to audio capture, your dongle of choice may come with software. If not, Audacity for Windows and macOS is an excellent free audio editing program. You could trim and tidy up your audio as well as record it.

With Audacity open on screen, choose your USB input from the recording device drop-down menu (with the microphone just next to it). Click the red Record button to start recording, play your audio source, then use the black Stop button to finish the recording. Audacity has a stack of encoding options and filters that are worth checking out via the online manual.

One of the features worth exploring is noise reduction, which can help cut out the hiss of cassette tapes. From the Effect menu, choose Noise Reductionyoull be asked to choose a sample of audio for Audacity to work with, and you then select how aggressive you want the filter to be.

Get Those Records, Tapes and CDs Onto Your Smartphone

A huge amount of the worlds audio has been digitized, but many veterans of the Analog Age still have out-of-print albums, lectures and other content locked on vinyl records, cassettes and CDs. Converting the audio to digital formats for personal use is much simpler than it used to be, though, thanks in part to gadgets that connect to a computers USB port.

In addition to making files that play on your smartphone or media server, digitizing your analog audio creates an electronic archive you can store online for safekeeping. The steps for converting your old recordings vary on the formats and equipment you have, but heres a general outline of the process and the equipment you may need.

Get Audio-Editing Software

No matter what type of analog media youre converting, you need software to digitize it. Capturing the audio to a computer has been a common approach for decades, and free programs to do the job include Apples GarageBand for Mac and the open-source Audacity (for Windows, Mac and Linux), which has its own guide for converting records and tapes. Commercial software is also available, like Roxios $50 Easy LP to MP3 or the $40 Golden Records from NCH Software.

Choose a digital format for recording. Uncompressed or lossless formats like WAV, FLAC and AIFF preserve more of the original audio for higher-quality sound, but compressed formats like MP3 create smaller files.

Follow the softwares instructions for importing audio. After you capture the whole album, you can use the program to slice up the recording into individual tracks, label the songs, and clean up hiss, pops and other noise.

Digitize Vinyl

If your stereo equipment is long gone but you held on to your old records for sentimental reasons, using a compact USB-based conversion turntable that connects directly to the computer is one approach. You may not have ultimate control over the recording quality, but its usually the easiest process to convert the vinyl yourself.

For the less technically inclined, ION Audio makes several conversion turntables, including the $110 Premier LP, which connects to the computer with a USB cable and includes its own conversion software. Audio Technica, Crosley and Sony also make USB turntables.

If you still have a turntable with a headphone jack or a port labeled line (or a stereo receiver with a phono input for the record player), a device called a USB phono preamplifier links your hardware together with audio and USB cables to pump the sound into the computer for recording. ART Pro Audio USB Phono Plus ($100) and Reloop iPhono 2 USB Recording Interface (about $100 in the United States) are two options.

For USB-based recording using older turntable systems without the headphone jack or line output, youll most likely need to include a separate phono preamplifier box to boost the audio signal as well. The $50 Rolls VP29 and the $66 ART Pro Audio DJPRE II are two models to consider.

Digitize Audiotape

No tape deck? Tape players with USB connections for the computer or flash drives can be found online starting at around $20. These devices can be quite efficient for digitizing old lectures, family history and other recordings.

If you still have a tape deck, check its jacks. A cable with a 3.5-millimeter plug on both ends or an RCA-to-3.5mm cable are common for connecting to a computers line-in port (if it has one), or you may be able to use a USB interface box like those used for digitizing vinyl.

Convert CDs

Still have CDs you want to transfer but no CD player or computer disc drive? External USB-based CD players sell for as little as $20 online. Once you connect one, spin up those discs and import the tracks with Apples Music app for Mac, Microsofts Windows Media Player or another free CD-ripper app.

Outsource the Job

The do-it-yourself approach is not for everyone, but audio conversion services will happily digitize your old analog media for you for a price. This can range from $15 to $35 for each record or tape converted, but some companies include restoration and sound-cleanup services as well. Memories Renewed, Ever Present and DiJiFi area among the many conversion companies to check out.

Keep Looking

While not a surefire solution for a fully digitized library, some unreleased and obscure recordings turn up online eventually, as did tracks from Jeff Buckley and Prince this year.