Tech: USB cable

Subject: Tech: USB cable
From: GUEST,nickr90
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 08:41 AM

I want to transfer some old interviews from cassette tape to CD. Is there a cable available USB one end and fit into headphone slot other end?

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 08:56 AM

You would need something in the cable to do some conversion. There are usb soundcards and audio interfaces around. here is the first one I found.

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 09:29 AM

You are probably better using the standard small jack plugs which go into the Audio In section of the computer's sound card. Recording from cassette/L.P. etc has been discussed a lot on Mudcat. PC (windoze) freeware Audacity is a good recording programme which has useful sound processing options such as ways to remove tape hiss.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 09:43 AM

I must admit I've not a clue over the pro's and cons but would have guessed the USB approach could eliminate some noise. Would be interested to find out what resualts anyone who has tried this route have had.

I've yet to play with Audacity. It's not limited to WinPC btw. I've got it on Linux.

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: wysiwyg
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 09:47 AM

In the US, you can go to just about any Radio Shack and tell the clerk what each end of the cable needs to be, and they will set you up with adaptors and cables to get it done. If describing what you have will be difficult-- and it often is-- you can take digital pix along to show them, or another cable end that has the ends you need,
or count the pins to connect with. Or take the devices you want to connect, if they are small enough for portability.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 10:06 AM

It's not that sort of job, WYSIWYG. The signals coming from the audio out on the CD or whatever and the signals USB understand are different things.

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 01:41 PM

I bet there's a one-stop device that does this. How many cassettes, and how much would you have to pay to have them converted commercially? Maybe $10 a tape? (Just guessing, but I think my ex paid a similar price to have old LPs converted to CD). My old pal Drew Kaplan may have something (not a personal friend, mind you, but I got his catalogs for years in his first marketing venue. Now he's online at http://www.dak.com).

Yup. It's on his front page.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: artbrooks
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 02:22 PM

An exotic cable involving a USB plug really shouldn't be necessary. I use my laptop when I am recording LPs or cassettes, and I run the signal into the mic-in plug. A small pin-plug (is that an RCA plug?) to small pin-plug connector should work fine...run it from the headphone-out jack on the cassette player to the mic-in jack on the PC. Big to little adaptors for the headphone jack are readily available. If you are using a cassette deck that is part of a stereo system, run the line from either the Right/Left jacks of the receiver/amplifier or the deck; I found that I didn't have enough gain if I ran it through the receiver. You will need the appropriate Y-adaptor, but they are also readily available. Some kind of software is necessary; I use Magix Audio Cleaning Lab, which costs something around $35 US, but there are a lot of things out there.

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 03:18 PM

There has been a disgusting trend among PC makers to make everything "multimedia." Unfortunately, the industry's concept of music includes only playback of commercially produced "media content," with the result that the OEM sound cards in many new machines do not include an audio input jack. The input jack has been omitted to make room for output jacks for up to 7 or more channels of speakers.

Even adding a new "super sound card" is often not, by itself, a real solution to the problem, since the audio input is essentially an old fashioned serial port, and may conflict internally with other devices.

Old-timers may recognize the problem of finding DMA and IRQ assignments that don't conflict with other installed devices. There has been no progress in expanding the number of DMA channels and/or IRQ interrupt assignments available since the original DOS days. Although PnP in recent Windows versions usually is pretty good at resolving conflicts, in this case (adding another serial port device) it appears to fail pretty generally.

An additional caution for those contemplating new machines is that some, especially laptops, do not have any external parallel ports, and the only serial port may be the mouse connector. Sellers often are quite lax about telling you exactly what ports one might expect are or are not there.

IF THE MACHINE IN QUESTION has an audio jack, it would usually be the appropriate place to connect from the earphone jack of an external player. The output from the earphone jack is audio, and the simple serial cable isn't going to add any significant noise.

For machines that don't have an audio jack, a common workaround is to use the mouse port (which is a serial port with a different connector, but converison cables should be readily available) and, if necessary, use a USB mouse (which should also be readily available) to free up the serial (mouse) channel. Sometimes this works.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: chrisgl
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 07:44 PM

John just said >IF THE MACHINE IN QUESTION has an audio jack, it would usually be the appropriate place to connect from the earphone jack of an external player

You'll get distortion if the audio jack is designed to accept a microphone rather than 'line' input - which is the problem I have with my laptop.

Try Googling for "usb audio line-in"
This turned up some interesting devices - essentially some form of (cheap) soundcard with a USB cable to connect to the pc


chris :-)

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: GUEST,Observer
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 09:01 PM

#1. Bet a Mac

#2. Download the latest itunes

#3. Get a USB cable that plugs into ANY type output of output (headphone, external speakers, etc) and your computer

#4. Plan, record, put on computer, cd, dvd whatever.

#5. Ever imagine how great life would be if everybody had a Mac?

Subject: RE: Tech: USB cable
From: jeffp
Date: 30 Sep 06 - 09:42 PM

In order to go from a headphone output (analog) to a USB input (digital), you will need to have an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter in the run. If you have a sound card with a line in port, that would be easiest. If you only have a mic in port, you can get attenuator cables at Radio Shack which will step down the signal to one which will not overload the mic input.