Using GarageBand to rip cassette tapes
I just had to do this, and it’s a little tricker than I thought it would be. It is certainly possible, though, and the results were very good.
Firstly, the tape deck. You want to get as good a one as possible. I tried first with an old walkman type thing we had lying around and it was a mess. I managed to borrow a Tascam 122 which is professional quality deck and the difference was incredible. The good news is that the retail price of such a desk is about $250, presumably because tapes are disappearing faster than campaign pledges. If I have to do this again I’m going to buy one.
Connect the line out from the deck into the line in on your mac. You will then need to go to the sound tab in system preferences and select Line In as the default input device. Don’t close this window, you’re going to need to adjust the input volume from it.
In garage band, create a new song with a bpm of 40 – this gives you the longest import time. Delete the default track it creates for you and create a new track of type “Real Instrument”. This should default to input source built-in. Set monitor to on so you can hear the tape as it plays. At this point you will see three volume controls in GarageBand – one on the track mixer, a master one and a recording level control. Set the mixer and master controls to 0 db. If you tab to bring the system preferences box over GarageBand you will notice that changing the input level of the line in device also moves the recording level slider in GarageBand. Since the preferences tab is easier to use we’re going to use that to set the input volume.
On the tape deck, set output volume to somewhere around 30% and start playing the tape. Adjust the input volume so that the level maxes out at around 80%. I found it much easier to use headphones when adjusting the levels. Then rewind and cue the tape, and press record in GarageBand to start importing the tape. When the tape is finished you have several options as far as creating an MP3. You can import an entire tape into one song, and export each track by using the cycle region control to mark the individual tracks, or you can import each song individually. I was quite happy to treat the entire tape as a gapless album, so I kept it as a single MP3 file. I’m very pleased with he results.
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Tags: cassette tapes