[John Williamson]

On 04/04/2017 22:13, Michael Beacom wrote:
I'll bring that up when I talk to her, but my impression was that she
isn't interested in doing any production. She may not want to buy both
the recorder and an interface. So, I was going for simple. Not even sure
what kind of computer she owns.

Depending on how fussy she is about quality, there are portable cassette
units with a built in ADC, working over USB on both Mac and Windows
platforms. There are also one or two full size units which have better
tape handling for when the cassettes are not in prime condition.

Most of them have Dolby, which will save having to use a software
decoder. The ones I've seen come with Audacity, which is more than
powerful enough to record, top and tail the tracks direct to HD, and
maybe even enhance them a bit. If using the H4 or even the H2, which are
also good choices at this price level, the tracks will then have to be
imported into a DAW to tidy them up and split the cassette sides into
tracks or chapters for easier playback. Some specialist free software
and plugins for Audacity or other DAW programs can even be used to
automatically split tracks by detecting the silence in the gaps.


--
Tciao for Now!

John.