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I found 2 audio cassettes in my cabinet, which I had borrowed from my mom last year, intending to record & convert them into MP3 files.
One of them is labelled as being from 1987, with me and other relatives speaking on it.
One if them is labelled as being from 1972!
But anyway. So I thought I'd do it today. I dug out my notes on how I did it the past times - I had finished recording all my own tapes back in late 2016, though I still haven't finished cleaning up the raw WAV files into final MP3 files.
(Then I found a dirty computer mouse which must have been my brother's. I cleaned it up, including the sticky mouse wheel. That is one thing I actually accomplished today.)
Then I hooked up all the necessary peripherals to the old desktop computer I'd used for audio cassette recordings before, which has the line-in jack. But when I plugged the computer into the power strip, its power supply sparked and apparently broke. The computer won't turn on now. Bah humbug!
I thought that was the only computer we had with a line-in jack, but I found another! (I have five old desktop computers sitting around here, getting older. 1 is mine. 2 are Qiao's. 3 were my brother's, which he said I could get rid of, but I haven't gotten around to checking and clearing off all the hard drives yet. So they are still sitting here.)
That other computer started up ok. It even connected to my wi-fi network ok, which was a surprise as I thought the wi-fi password was changed since it was last used, but apparently not. It started trying to update all kinds of stuff and became rather unresponsive; once I switched off the network it was usable again.
Then it seemed like my cassette player was done for. There was a lot of distortion in the sound when playing a test cassette on it (not one of the ones I still want to record; I'm not risking them until I'm sure the player is working ok).
Per these pages, it may be due to the cassette being old, not due to the player:
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/is-there-any-way-to-fix-cassette-distortion-squeaking.657670/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKbbu7xyPzk
Maybe the cassette lubricant has dried out, or has gotten sticky? Or maybe I need to fast-forward and rewind the tape a few times. Slapping the tape on both sides didn't help.
And maybe I need to try some different tapes.
But that will have to wait for another day.
Update, 2020/01/28:
The problem was the player, not the cassettes. I'm glad, as this means the other cassettes are most likely ok too.
One of them is labelled as being from 1987, with me and other relatives speaking on it.
One if them is labelled as being from 1972!
But anyway. So I thought I'd do it today. I dug out my notes on how I did it the past times - I had finished recording all my own tapes back in late 2016, though I still haven't finished cleaning up the raw WAV files into final MP3 files.
(Then I found a dirty computer mouse which must have been my brother's. I cleaned it up, including the sticky mouse wheel. That is one thing I actually accomplished today.)
Then I hooked up all the necessary peripherals to the old desktop computer I'd used for audio cassette recordings before, which has the line-in jack. But when I plugged the computer into the power strip, its power supply sparked and apparently broke. The computer won't turn on now. Bah humbug!
I thought that was the only computer we had with a line-in jack, but I found another! (I have five old desktop computers sitting around here, getting older. 1 is mine. 2 are Qiao's. 3 were my brother's, which he said I could get rid of, but I haven't gotten around to checking and clearing off all the hard drives yet. So they are still sitting here.)
That other computer started up ok. It even connected to my wi-fi network ok, which was a surprise as I thought the wi-fi password was changed since it was last used, but apparently not. It started trying to update all kinds of stuff and became rather unresponsive; once I switched off the network it was usable again.
Then it seemed like my cassette player was done for. There was a lot of distortion in the sound when playing a test cassette on it (not one of the ones I still want to record; I'm not risking them until I'm sure the player is working ok).
Per these pages, it may be due to the cassette being old, not due to the player:
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/is-there-any-way-to-fix-cassette-distortion-squeaking.657670/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKbbu7xyPzk
Maybe the cassette lubricant has dried out, or has gotten sticky? Or maybe I need to fast-forward and rewind the tape a few times. Slapping the tape on both sides didn't help.
And maybe I need to try some different tapes.
But that will have to wait for another day.
Update, 2020/01/28:
The problem was the player, not the cassettes. I'm glad, as this means the other cassettes are most likely ok too.