I’ve been on a crusade to turn my mementos digital, thus solving the problem of having way too much clutter due to nostalgic items.
Along the way, I found 5 micro cassette tapes from 2005 – mostly recording my little sister Molly (she’s 13 now – see below) as a baby.
I knew I had them, but kind of ignored them as there didn’t seem to be an easy solution to digitizing them.
Until today! Scanning in some old documents (old notes from my original video tape recordings -yes, I’ve always been thorough it seems)
I found the tapes and decided today was the day!
I searched on the internet, and found a lot of solutions, mostly that cost money and mostly that got 3 stars. :/
On a budget due to an upcoming life adventure (I’ll tell you when it works out next month, haha) I decided to NOT spend anything on this if I could help it. Doing what I do, I figured I have a bunch of hodge-podge equipment and cords, I should be able to finagle SOMETHING.
So! What were my options?
Option 1: After browsing my cords, I found one of these babies. A 3.5mm – 3.5mm cord.
I tried plugging it into my headphone jack on my computer, and the headphone jack on my Sony M-405 micro cassette recorder. I changed the output to “Soundflower” and tried to record into Audacity. It did not recognize anything. No go.
Option 2: I found a cord I bought for my guitar -1/4 to USB, and found a 1/4 to 3.5 mm adapter. I tried the same tactic as above. It LOOKED like something was happening, but nothing was getting recorded.
Ugh!
Option 3: As the literal option 3 on B&H’s website, I saw them using an H1 Zoom recorder plugged into the original tape recorder they had. Aha!
I used the cord I had already found (3.5-3.5), plugged it into the output jack of my Sony tape recorder, plugged the other end into the input of my Zoom recorder, plugged some headphones in to monitor, pressed record and pressed play. HALLELUJAH! There’s my little sister’s cute babbles and whining! I only had the left channel recording (I think it’s the Zoom’s problem – It’s been around the block) but I can always double it later in Audacity. The quality is as good as it is on the Sony recorder. Which isn’t saying a WHOLE lot, but there’s only so much you can do when depending on 1) Old tech in general and 2) Old tech that’s been sitting un-used for 13 years in your various closets.
>Two best parts about this solution being the one that worked:
- I can listen to the output AS it is happening. Not after the fact when I might have accidentally recorded a lot of silence or had audio volumes too loud and everything peaking and horrible quality.
- My computer is NOT out of commission while this is happening. If I had to record the audio through my computer’s channels, I would have had to have NOT been using my computer as any OTHER sound coming from my computer would have been integrated into the recording. Not to mention since I had the output as Soundflower, I wouldn’t have been able to hear anything from my computer anyway.
wo downsides of this method:
- There is an additional step of needing to transfer from the micro-sd card to my computer. (Small potatoes! But there it is.)
- If you do not have a H1 Zoom recorder, it does cost $100 to buy one. Looking at the cost of one transfer service – they were charging $19.95 for each tape to be converted… I have 5 tapes… if I didn’t have a recorder, it seriously would have been the same price to have them converted through a service or to buy the H1 and do it myself. Sure, doing it yourself costs time, but I’m busy transferring as I’m typing RIGHT NOW, and, if I didn’t already have the recorder, I would after I was done. And it’s a pretty helpful little bugger. I’ve used it to record people at my best friend’s wedding, I’ve used to to record audio for interviews, and I used it extensively while shooting for the Pool Show and Movie. (which is when I think it got damaged and now only recognizes the left channel).
I’m thinking of recording a how-to to go with this blog. Do we think that would be helpful?
Well, whether it was or not, I did it.
You can record your iPhone Screen! Cool, eh? (video)
My mother passed suddenly at 57. I was about 30 years old and was really devastated. I worked in IT so there was often down time waiting for programs to finish or this or that. My mom was not only my mother but my best friend. Anyway we often talked on the phone while I was at work. A lot of times she would not turn off the voice mail machine. You know the kind that required a micro-cassette. I have held on to those tapes for over 30 years now. I tried buying a micro cassette player with an output jack but there was no equipment or software to recognize the analog signal then convert to a digital file then remove the empty content. I believe after you “play and convert the analog sound to digital” there are several Mac and Win software products that will allow you to see the sound spikes and fast forward or edit those out. Of course if it takes awhile to let the micro cassette to play and record to a digital file, you should back that file asap. Depending on your expertise and the quality of the editing software, mistakes happen to the best of us. I really appreciate the work you put into sharing your experience and I learned some new stuff
Thank you so much for sharing your story! I can imagine how precious those voicemails must be to you. It’s wonderful that you’ve held onto them for all these years. I’ll definitely keep your suggestions in mind for future projects. So glad you found my post helpful, I’m always happy to share what I’ve learned.
Hi! Thank you for this information. It is great. I am new to all this techy stuff, so what did you mean by “it only has 1 channel”?
She means she could only hear her recording in one side of the headphones (left or right but not both).
Before my grandparents passed away, I recorded dozens of cassette tapes of them talking. I bought the Zoom H1n Handy Recorder in order to digitize them according to your instructions and I’m excited to get this to work! 🙂 I have a word of caution for others, and a couple of questions where I’m getting stuck.
Word of caution:
The Zoom H1n Handy Recorder is only compatible with a micro SD card of 32 GB or less. The 64 GB won’t work — it will say “error” when you try to format it. Also, make sure you don’t use a microSDXC card, only microSD or microSDHC.
Questions:
1. I just started the recording process, and noticed that as I’m recording, the sound I’m hearing is much, much worse quality than if I just listen straight from my GE cassette tape. Like, so bad that I can’t tell what people are saying anymore.
2. After a few seconds of this, I stopped and decided to test how the files would sound in my computer. So I plopped the microSD card into my computer and opened the files to play them in Windows Media Player and heard — total silence. Now why would that be?
I understand you may not be able to diagnose my problems from a distance — also, of course the equipment is old — I bought the Zoom a few years ago for this project but am only getting started on it now, and the cassette player is even older. Still, let me know if you have any ideas!
I highly recommend that anyone reading this post who doesn’t already have a Zoom recorder try this other method instead: https://arapahoelibraries.org/blogs/post/converting-a-microcassette-to-digital-mp3/
The equipment is cheaper, and it works much better (having now tried both).
You just need
– your cassette player
– this converter ($16) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019T9KS04
– this cord ($8) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RDNDLR2
and you can record directly into Audacity (an audio recording/editing program you can download for free by searching “Audacity download”).
More detailed info available in the link https://arapahoelibraries.org/blogs/post/converting-a-microcassette-to-digital-mp3/
You can’t hear the sound while recording like you can using the Zoom h1n, but it’s not very hard to cut out the silences afterward using Audacity.
Wow! Thank you for leaving this comment with your experiences, Cat. When I made the blog, I didn’t really look in to or consider how the best way to transfer tapes to digital would be, I just had the Zoom H1n recorder because of my video work and started messing around to discover I could actually convert the old tapes of my sister. Knowing how fast physical tapes could degrade, I was happy just to have them converted and to leave it at that. But I am grateful that you have tried both the methods and found the one that worked the best! I think anyone searching for this solution in the future will benefit.