Back in the 80's our library had collected the history of Castroville citizens using these strange square like devices (I believe they are called cassette tapes). As you can imagine, these cassette tapes are out of date. To correct this problem, these audio histories must be converted to a newer format. Our format of choice is mp3. In order to convert these tapes to mp3 we are using a laptop (using the microphone port), headphones, an audio splitter, line in cable, the open source audio editor Audacity, LAME MP3 encoder and a cassette player with a headphone jack (which was the hardest piece of equipment to find). The line in cable connects to the headphone jack of the cassette player and one end of the splitter. The other end is for the headphones. The splitter then plugs into the microphone port on the laptop. This way we can hear the tape as it plays and adjust the volume to increase its quality. The tapes are then recorded in real time to the program Audacity and exported as mp3.
Of course because the conversion is in real time, this task will take awhile (I'm on the 3rd tape in the first box of four) but the end result will be well worth the effort. Also I just figured out how to put the tape in so side A plays first!
Gerardo James Flores II
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
If you want I can remaster the audio for you. I'm sure since it's coming off of a cassette there can be a lot of room for improvement.
Post a Comment