I would like to convert some of my cassettes into digital so I can put them on CD and/or flash drives to use in my new car. I have been researching this and I know it isn’t easy, but I would like step by step directions. I know it is possible to use garageband but how? I know it can be done via a little device like a walkman that uses audacity to produce a CD. I tried that but couldn’t get it to work so I returned the player device
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ita sara
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How Do I Make a CD From Cassette Tapes?
Comments: 3 Responses to “How Do I Make a CD From Cassette Tapes?”
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Step-by-step is difficult because you need to purchase an audio adapter for your Mac, and the steps there may vary depending on the maker.
Basically, you get one of those. I used the Griffin iMic, but they don't make it anymore. So check Amazon for "audio input adapter usb Mac" and see what looks good. You want something with a "line in" port. You connect the cassette player output to the "line in" on the adapter, and the adapter is plugged into your Mac.
Then choose that adapter as an input in GarageBand or Audacity. It doesn't matter which you use to record as anything that will record audio from the input will work. You just want to start recording, then play the tape. Then stop recording when the tape is done.
Then you export from the app you used to record as any good format, like AAC or MP3. Bring that into iTunes. If you use GarageBand, you can export directly to iTunes.
Then in iTunes you can use the CD burning function to create a CD from those tracks. I would probably take the time to organize them into an album and set the properties of the tracks so they appear in iTunes like a normal album. Then select the album and burn them to CD.
If you want to put them on a USB drive for car playback, then you need to refer to the documentation for your car or car stereo to see what it requires in terms of formatting for the drive and file types for the audio files.
Thanks Gary. I wish someone could come to me and show me all this. I'll see what I can do from your descriptions. I tried to made a couple cd's from an original I have. Neither one of them worked in the car on an external cd player I purchased for the car. The original CD did work. One of the other copies I made years agovworks perfectly in my older car with internal cd player but not in my new car. I just don't get it. My daughter in the newer generation doesn't see any reason to ownvcd's.
Ellen: Keep in mind that there are two types of music CDs: Audio CDs and data CD-ROMs with music files on them. Audio CDs are a special format that hold about 70 minutes of music and will play on any music CD player going all the way back to the 80s. Data CD-ROMs are just data. You can store files of any kind on them. Some CD players from the 90s and beyond will actually read these and pick out files in certain formats (mp3) and can play them. Perhaps your car's CD player can do that. Check the instruction manual and it may say that it can and tell you how to format the CD-ROM and the files. Otherwise, choose Audio CD as the format to be compatible.