How to set up your equipment to record
In part III of this series, we covered how to clean your equipment and tapes so that you get the best possible sound quality. In Part IV we cover how to connect it all up, so that you can record your cassette tape to a digital format.
The Impatient Option
In this option, we talked about connecting a cheap walkman type device purchased online from Ali Express or eBay, which has an in built USB port to connect to your computer or SDCard. I am awaiting delivery of one of these units so that I can properly describe the process. However, please see the below diagram for an overview of how to connect it:
The Libran Option
In this option we focused on upping the quality by adding a better quality rack mount style of cassette deck and a dedicated analog capture device such as the Focusrite 4i4. As you can see from the diagram, we lose the ability to directly save to an SD Card / USB stick or computer and gain an extra device in the chain.
The perfectionist Option
In the perfectionist option, all we really do is replace the cassette player and analog capture device with higher quality devices. So depending on which device you purchased, the connection of the devices is usually exactly the same.
Reel to Reel or other analog audio source
If you have a different source such as a reel to reel player, you simply replace the cassette player with the reel to reel player, or other device and the process is the same. The one difference is you may find your player has the older DIN style connector instead of RCA. You can still buy these, such as this one on AliExpress.
