How to Hook Up a Cassette Player to a Computer

Many of us still have plenty of cassette tapes sitting around, as well as an old cassette player that we haven't used in years. You can connect your cassette player to your computer in most cases, provided that you have a sound card and a line-in or microphone jack on your computer.

Things You'll Need

• 3.5mm male audio cable

Instructions

1. Connect one end of the audio cable to the line out or headphones jack on your cassette player.

2. Connect the other end to the line-in jack on your computer. You can usually find this jack on the rear of your computer tower, near the speaker connection. If your computer doesn't have a line-in jack, use the microphone jack (quality will be reduced).

3. Insert your cassette into the player. Open your volume mixer and select "line-in volume" or "microphone volume." Make sure the volume is turned on and adjust it as necessary. If you don't see either setting, go to "configuration" and enable one of the lines.

4. Begin playing your cassette. You should be able to hear it through your computer speakers.

Tips & Warnings

• Use an audio recording software if you want to record the music playing from your cassette player and transfer it to digital format. Several open-source (free) software programs are available. You'll need to install the program of your choice and follow the specific software instructions to transfer your music to digital format. You do not need to have speakers to record the music and transfer it to digital format. However, you will not be able to listen to the music while you are recording. This will make it difficult.

Resources

• AV Cables
• Audacity Audio Recording
• AVS Audio Recorder and Editor