I have a tape recorder of the type that was often used as a dictaphone 30 years ago. It uses those tiny casettes. My sister has a casette with some stuff recorded on it that she wants me to transfer to a computer file. I tried connecting the headphone out of the tape machine to the microphone in of the computer and using the sound recorder in Accessories, but it doesn’t work.

I could use a microphone to do the transfer, but it will pick up hum.

Can anyone suggest why the direct connection won’t work and what I might do to effect the transfer?

morrie said:

I have a tape recorder of the type that was often used as a dictaphone 30 years ago. It uses those tiny casettes. My sister has a casette with some stuff recorded on it that she wants me to transfer to a computer file. I tried connecting the headphone out of the tape machine to the microphone in of the computer and using the sound recorder in Accessories, but it doesn’t work.

I could use a microphone to do the transfer, but it will pick up hum.

Can anyone suggest why the direct connection won’t work and what I might do to effect the transfer?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows-vista/trapped-on-tape-transferring-audio-from-cassettes-to-your-computer

>Can anyone suggest why the direct connection won’t work and what I might do to effect the transfer?

You may be over driving the mic input. The headphone out will be driving a higher voltage then what the mic input is set up for.

guess

sibeen said:

>Can anyone suggest why the direct connection won’t work and what I might do to effect the transfer?

You may be over driving the mic input. The headphone out will be driving a higher voltage then what the mic input is set up for.

guess

Yep. Line level for consumer products is -10dBu or about .34V and an impedance of 10k ohm. Mic level is very very low voltage and an impedance of 600 ohm. Some desktop computers have a line in connector as well. Or you need a pad inline to drop the signal level and change the impedance to mic level.

Yeah.. Impedance mismatch

(you can say impedance mismatch to any question like this and sound like you know what you’re talking about)

Ian said:

Yeah.. Impedance mismatch

(you can say impedance mismatch to any question like this and sound like you know what you’re talking about)

Does your computer (sound card) have a Line In socket?

You could try connecting from the cassette player’s headphone socket to Line In … their impedances will be closer.

AussieDJ said:

Ian said:

Yeah.. Impedance mismatch

(you can say impedance mismatch to any question like this and sound like you know what you’re talking about)

Does your computer (sound card) have a Line In socket?

You could try connecting from the cassette player’s headphone socket to Line In … their impedances will be closer.

It is a laptop. I could have a look to see if I have anything else with a line in function. Thanks for the suggestion.

Shouldn’t be too much fuss, I did some some recently from old portable tape player into LT using Audacity, but you could use any number of things, even whatever native to your OS package. In the old days i’d have used Scanrec.

Was easy as tape player had 3.5mm socket and LT has also, so was straight 3.5mm – 3.5mm lead.

Try to keep most lead shielded, and don’t swap core and shield somewhere if you’re dodgiing it up.

You’ll have to keep the output of the tapeplayer up a bit and keep the volume down a bit downstream to keep the signal well above the noise. If it sounds and looks like its overdriving then turn the tapeplayer down a bit.

And if the recorder you are using has a tick box for gain you may want to try it on both settings.

Mostly mic inputs are for condenser mics and such which aren’t a super tiny output. There’s a low noise FET burried in them as recall.