On Jun 10, 12:27 pm, "Richard Crowley" wrote:
"Adrian" wrote...
Can someone advise me please? I plan to copy some very old (38 years)
openreeltapes to CD. I have an aging Sony TC366 OpenReelRecorder
and a DellLatitudeD810 Notebook.
Does the recorder still run? All the rubber parts still intact,
etc? Should be able to play tapes without involving any
other equipment.
Somehow I thought this would be easy!! :-) However, at present the
notebook does not recognize an analogue signal at the line in.
There are a series of windows that control the sound features.
On my Dell notebook running XP, I can right-click on the little
speaker in the tool-tray and select "Open Volume Control".
Then click on "Options" in the menu bar, and click "Properites"
then I can select to see the "Recording" control panel (rather
than the "Playback" which is normally displayed. Be sure that
your desired input is checked so that it appears in the window.
You can then select the desired input, and turn up the volume,
etc. This assumes that you really have a line input. Most
notebook computers (including mine) have only mono mic
input.
Moreover, the only piece of software that seems to have an audio
record option is Windows Sound Recorder with a time limit of 60
seconds. I need to record several hours!
There is a way to hack Windows Sound Recorder to run longer,
but IMHO, its not worth the trouble.
So, what hardware do I need?
If you *really* have a stereo line input on your notebook compuer,
then you don't need anything but a cable to connect between the
recorder output and the PC input.
and, what software? Audio quality is moderately important,
given that the source material is not perfect.
A couple of possibilities are (free) Audacity
and (very cheap) TotalRecorder.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (free, but somewhat fiddly)http://www.highcriteria.com/ ($18US, but straightforward)
(see also their "Primer on PC Audio")
Thanks Richard.
Closer inspection tells me that I only have a microphone input. I did
find the windows screens that allow me to change the "audio mix".
But, without a line input they don't help a whole lot.
My next step is to find an "iMic". :-) Then I will check out the
software option you suggest.
Adrian