Audio Cassettes

Post by **trubrit** » April 11, 2011, 10:37 am

My ten year old stereo system that I used to play tapes Cd's etc has finally succumbed to old age and given up the ghost. Now I am left with literally 100's of them, most with a lot of sounds from the past, that I can no longer listen to . I would like to transfer them to CD or load to my computer to preserve them. I have no experience how to do this but have googled and seen a programme called Audacity1.2.6.. Has anyone used this? Or can recommend another way .I don't have any means of playing them so presumably would have to buy a cassette player. Are they still available or is it off to the second hand shops ?Advise welcome please .

Post by **BobHelm** » April 11, 2011, 10:50 am

Here is a pretty good & detailed explanation of how to do TB..
http://www.wikihow.com/Transfer-Cassett ... o-Computer

Yes, you will need a cassette player to do. About 5 years ago new were certainly available in Udon, not so sure now - but just because I have not looked. May have better luck finding a radio/cassette player than just a cassette player - but it serves the same end.
I would actually be quite surprised if you had anything in your collection that could not actually be found on the internet to download anyway. There is an absolutely huge amount of torrent downloadable music of every taste known to man available. It would take a bit of searching though as many of the sites tend to focus on particular 'genre' .

Post by **jorg** » April 11, 2011, 12:41 pm

Another possibility is a usb cassette player, but i'm not sure they sell them in Udon

Just Google on "Cassette to USB Player"

Example:

Convert your old cassette tapes to digital files for music on the go. Turn your tapes into MP3s and listen on your computer, iPod, or in the car! Tape Express is a portable, handheld USB tape player that works with all kinds of tapes. It has an easy-to-use USB connection for sending the music on your tapes right into your computer where it's instantly turned into MP3 files.

Post by **Little Italian Udon** » April 11, 2011, 1:03 pm

I have the same problem my full collection of Elvis are in my cassettes . there should be someone in udon able to save them in a disk.

Post by **Wee Jimmy** » April 11, 2011, 2:10 pm

Here is what you want. If you see them in Udon let us know as I could do with one also.

Post by **BillaRickaDickay** » April 11, 2011, 8:29 pm

I would agree with Bob, Almost everything that has been produced can be downloaded now, 3 years ago I spent hours/Days/weeks converting my Vinyl collection to computer digital format using a specially adapted Record deck and EZY Vinyl Convertor software bought from Comet in the UK which installed the record tracks onto Itunes, the problem is that the titles of each track have to be typed in manually, so its not something you can switch on and walk away, needs constant supervision. you also carry all the scratches and hiss onto download.

I kept all my Vinyl albums and singles maybe they are worth something but binned hundreds of cassettes which I think have no value.

Post by **BobHelm** » April 12, 2011, 12:41 pm

The Robinson's electrical section have cassette/radios TB.
Cheapest there 590 baht up to 2,999 baht for a 'ghetto blaster'. Had, I imagine, 10 different make/style, 1 @ 590, a couple at the 1,000 mark & then a few expensive ones. Even the 590 baht one was a reasonable size for radio listening.
So I imagine that you can obtain cheaper in one of the many electrical outlets around town..

Post by **trubrit** » April 12, 2011, 1:00 pm

BobHelm wrote:The Robinson's electrical section have cassette/radios TB.
Cheapest there 590 baht up to 2,999 baht for a 'ghetto blaster'. Had, I imagine, 10 different make/style, 1 @ 590, a couple at the 1,000 mark & then a few expensive ones. Even the 590 baht one was a reasonable size for radio listening.
So I imagine that you can obtain cheaper in one of the many electrical outlets around town..

Thanks for that Bob will more than likely go that way. It seems pointless getting one of those Ion Tape things as it will only be a one off operation, but thanks to those that made the suggestion. The radio combination I can always give to the gardener,after, he seems to work faster to music.

;I am interested in your mention of torrent downloads though. I have never looked at that before. I googled it and came up with a few sites . They all wanted me to register first but when I did my Firefox came up with a warning about suspicious behaviour, so I immediately got out of there .Is this normal or is my browser too sensitive or did I just choose the wrong sites ?

Post by **jackspratt** » April 12, 2011, 1:16 pm

Val, to download torrents you need:

- a torrent client (suggest uTorrent)

- a torrent "search engine" (I use both Piratebay and Isohunt - Bob has previously suggested another one [can't remember name] which searches all the search engines, but I can't get it to work efficiently).

You just type in the song you are looking for in the above search engine, and it will present the available copies. Click on the "download torrent" (preferable having looked at the comments first, to ensure no nasties are included), and it will lead you to your torrent client. Then proceed with download.

Post by **BobHelm** » April 12, 2011, 1:34 pm

trubrit wrote:They all wanted me to register first but when I did my Firefox came up with a warning about suspicious behaviour, so I immediately got out of there .Is this normal or is my browser too sensitive or did I just choose the wrong sites ?

You need to be very careful about which torrent sites you use TB..
Some of them are fronts for the 'bot nets' who just want your PC as a scam mail engine.
Some are only there to try & extract money from you to join a service that you can get elsewhere for free.
I would always recommend that you scan a downloaded file before you run it as, sadly there are some strange & vindictive people 'out there'....Conspiracy theorists will say it is the large music companies doing it in order to discourage people from sharing... I think that there are probably enough nutters out there anyway...

Just about the safest & the best site is
http://www.demonoid.me/
However they only accept new members (always for FREE) from time to time. If you can join them then that is undoubtedly the way to go - although they (obviously) don't have everything.

Another safe way to get torrents is to download
Gnutella Turbo from here:
http://www.pro-sharing.com/?Version=6.9.7.0

That 'goes away' & searches a few sites for anything you ask for & then downloads what you ask it to.
Again it is a bit limited in where it searches, but that is really for the users protection...
If anybody was searching for a particular piece of music & it couldn't be found then you can just search the net for it via Google/Yahoo/Bing & then let Gnutella handle the actual download still.

If you are going to search for specific pieces in that way then I would strongly suggest that you download WOT (Web Of Trust) add on for Firefox & stay far away from any sites that it shows as 'red'!!!

Post by **BobHelm** » April 12, 2011, 1:40 pm

Sorry Jack, was typing same time as you...

Yes, do use Peerspider, downloadable from here...
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/F ... ider.shtml

Not for the faint hearted, but can be very good when other engines fail as it searches just about anywhere you want...

Post by **jorg** » April 13, 2011, 12:31 am

It has been a while since i downloaded a lot with torrents (because i prefer news/usenet now), but i always liked http://www.torrentbox.com/ for music.