audio cassette -> CD?

There are devices that look like modified Walkmans that connect by USB to your computer specifically designed for the task. Most even come with the software needed to detect the gaps between tracks and separate them.

There are also some that fit an optical drive bay and connect internally.

One of the leading manufacturers of these devices is ION. Check them out online.

What sort of cables might I be looking at, then?

There are many ways to do that.

First of all, you should use a good tape player. A walkman or other cheap cassette recorder gives you a low quality.

Then you need a recording device which can be any PC or laptop.

You can even use a DVD recorder which can record analogue input. Some can be set to record audio only but it doesn't matter since you can always use a "DVD ripper" program to extract the audio track of the "movie" you made from the audio tape.

You get the best results using a PC or laptop and a good audio editing program. I recommend "Audacity" since it is pretty good and for free!

Before you record, you should run the tape and watch the VU meter of the recording software. Then set the input (and/or output level of the tape machine) until the bar graph barely scratches the red part. When the bar hits the maximum, you loose information since digital data can't become greater than this maximum. Less is more when recording audio on digital media!
Set the recording to stereo, 44.1kHz and at least 16 bits. If your sound card supports it, choose more than 16 bits. The reason is that when you use more than 16 bits, you can use the "normalize" filter to adapt the recording to maximum volume of the CD without clipping or losses. When done, save the data as 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo WAV since that's what belongs onto an audio CD.

Keep this file as your master record and then cut it into tracks. Use Nero or any CD burning software you like and add the audio tracks in an audio CD project.

You can also stick a sewing needle into a post card and scratch the needle along the groove and record the sound using a microphone!

A headphone jack is meant for headphones. It has the wrong signal level, is meant for a very different impedance and usually boosts certain frequencies to make up for the bad linearity of common headphones.


You need an output meant for an amp or a second tape deck to be able to record the music with reasonable quality! This is the only way to record the original signal from the tape fully unaltered and without extra distortions.

True, but explaining a home made cassete tape player would be a bit complicated, wouldn't it? It's not that hard to make a home made player for wire and you can make a reel to reel tape player if you are skilled, but the stereo compact cassette tape requires a precision which is even pretty hard for professionals.

There just might be a reason why a 4-track reel to reel uses a ½ inch tape instead of a narrow "string" like a double sided stereo (2x2) compact cassette.

But if you connect a HighCom system to a compact cassette system and use chrome tapes, the quality comes real close to a CD. But that's nothing compared to a high speed 1 inch flying head reel to reel machine on steroids HighCom!

Exactly and more distortions won't help there!

I've never had to copy a cassete by microphone. My very first cassette recorder had a German standard DIN jack

(This is an extension cable. The actual standard link has the left plug on both ends.)

The pin in the middle is ground and the left pair of pins is stereo IN and the right pair is stereo OUT. A mono machine takes the pins on the ends of the plug which is the left channel. A symmetric microphone offers positive signal on the left IN channel and negative signal on the left OUT channel. All signals are 0.7Vpp.

A Stereo machine will accept either a stereo signal from any other kind of machine or just record on the left channel of a mono machine. A mono machine just takes the left channel ignoring the right channel. A symmetric mono recorder also accepts a asymmetric signal on the positive input with the negative signal input wired to the other machine's input delivering nothing.

So you can plug any devices together using this standard cable and the machines will always use their "lowest common denominator" with maximum quality.

A common record player with built in RIAA pre-amp has a "Tape" connector. In standard mode, it offers the music it plays to the connector and plays the music over its internal or external amp at the same time. Virtually all of those record players have a "Tape" switch where it still offers the music of the record to the connector as output but puts the signal from the input of this connector onto the speakers. So you can record a record on tape, play a tape over the record player speakers or you can record a record and play the current recording if the tape machine has a separate read and write head so you listen to the copy on tape while you record it to check the quality of your recording.

This was a brilliant system, you just plug any machines you want together without the need to have any idea of what you are doing and it just works. And then came the US Chinch jacks in the late 80s spoiling everything and making everything real complicated. The old DIN system had vanished!

You can do a lot of neat stuff using this system.


Most reel to reel tape machine have at least two jacks. You can record two sources simultaneously on both tracks, e.g. the music from a record player on the left channel of the tape and your microphone singing along on the right track and playing it back you can regulate the volume independently or switch to single channel mode.

Then you can "daisy chain" machines. If you have a record player with speakers, you can make another record player or tape machine - or just an amp - play the same music on its own speakers. With the extension cables, it was no problem playing music on your stereo system in the living room and playing the same music outside or in another room during a big party using another machine. You can use more than one machine with speakers if the ones in the middle have two jacks like any good reel to reel machine has. And it can work in all directions so you can play a record from your living room stereo and then play a tape outside near the BBQ grill.

except that HDMI can also carry video and communications signals. (for example, my bluray player tells my TV to switch to the bluray input, and my TV tells the bluray player to turn off, when I turn the TV off.)