Misses found some cassette tapes she wants to copy stuff off of. Looks like you can get a player with USB capability for a flash drive to do the transfer off the cassette.

Several models on Amazon but thought I would ask here first.

Any recommendations/advice?

TIA

Do you already have a cassette player? Maybe one from an old stereo system?

If you have a player that has a headphone jack, plug into it and plug the other end into your Mac's mic jack.

Open System Preferences, click Sound, click Input, select your cassette deck's input, and drag the "Input Volume" slider left or right to decrease or increase its volume.
(Start with a very low volume on the cassette deck or stereo, as your computer's input circuitry can be damaged by high-level input).

Plug the USB stick into your computer and select it as the file destination, begin recording.

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.”
-- François de La Rochefoucauld

Growing older is mandatory. Growing up is optional.

check beezees for "usb audio capture".
these will make the job easier provided you have a deck as they should take care of impedance mismatch, which is more or less what Ombligo is pointing to.

If you're comfortable with ebay or craigs and a bit more $, look for a used Focusrite 2i2.
They are well built, sound very good, easy to use and hold resale value should you want to dump it after you use it.

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If there are spelling issues, please pardon, Owen the cat is sitting on my keyboard.

I have a little Monoprice mixing board with a USB output, I just run stuff through that into Audacity. But that's probably overkill for what you're doing, any el-cheapo digitizer (even a video capture USB dongle, just use the audio cables) should work fine.

Do not use the microphone input. You will not get close to reasonable fidelity

I had good results with this

DIGITNOW! USB 2.0 Audio Capture Card Grabber for Cassette Tapes and Vinyl Records

$16 at Bezos

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Embarassing myself on the Internet since 1978.

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anonymouse1
Do you already have a cassette player? Maybe one from an old stereo system?

None.

I would try and find a friend that has a cassette player that you could borrow, and use one of those simple interfaces from beezee.
The devices that you see that our cassette player with USB output, for $26 I wouldn't count on that transport lasting very long or being very stable. But I have never used one.
You could look for a used cassette player on Craigslist or eBay. But since they haven't been made in 10 years, and most had belt drives, you face the possibility that the belt may have disintegrated. Unless you're lucky enough to find a direct drive that is inexpensive.
Alternatively there are numerous companies that transfer analog tape to digital formats. They are not cheap. But it's done right. The one that I have used is in New Jersey. Called sonicraft. They have done multitrack transfers for me and have done a great job.

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!#$@@$#!

If there are spelling issues, please pardon, Owen the cat is sitting on my keyboard.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2020 11:28AM by Fritz.

If they're cassettes of commercially available music, you could see if they're on YouTube and use ClipGrab to grab the audio to mpg...just sayin'.

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DewGuy
If they're cassettes of commercially available music, you could see if they're on YouTube and use ClipGrab to grab the audio to mpg...just sayin'.

If that's what it is, then that's what I would do /have done.

Techmoan on youtube has had uniformly bad results with cheap cassette players with built in flash drives. Many will output mono audio from the cassette, and the resulting mp3 file is 64kbs.

This might be fine for spoken audio, but anything else, I would avoid.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2020 10:26AM by Rolando.

Check out your local stereo repair shop. They likely have a few mid to high end antiques abandoned and restored. You might even be able to “rent” one by selling it back when you’re done

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Embarassing myself on the Internet since 1978.

Pawn shops here have cassette players for $20 or less. I have a Griffin iMic hooked between a cassette deck and my old Macbook. I use Audacity to record the files.

My sister asked me to copy a bunch of cassettes for her, and I ended up finding many of the stuff on Youtube, and did what was suggested above. It was a lot quicker. Still have some meditation tapes she wants me to convert.

I have several dozen cassettes of live music either taped off the radio, or acquired in trade that I need to make digital files of. It just takes so long.