Analogue Audio to Windows, best method?

[JibberX]

Basically I want to get a casette tape....you know the things, plastic case witha ribbony thing on spindals, uses magnetics...anyways I want the "Audio" from a casette tape into my Windows XP machine...I have a plethora of inputs on my mobo, but I was wondering if you PC persons knew of any decent software for monitoring, equalising etc of an incoming audio stream?

[Crispin]

I just used a line-in and Windows Movie Maker.
What you're asking for sounds expensive tbh. I suppose the Sony Vaoi's come with some software that might be able to do some of that, which is what I have at home. But in the end I still used Windows Movie Maker.

The sound quality is good, background noise depends on the recording. Obviously if it's a commercially released tape as oppossed to a home recorded one or one recorded off a mike, then the background hiss will be much better.

I can upload a sample if you want?

[superkully]

Goldwave is your daddy. Used it for doing exactly the same thing your doing when I found some old audio reels in my dads loft.

[Super Stu]

Hmm, what's that software that used to be (or maybe still is?) big a while back? Sound Forge? Cool Edit? Something like that.

IIRC, one even had what effectively amounted to "vinyl -> mp3", where some filters would remove some of the guff from the LP. Would be worth seeing if either are still doing the rounds. Or Goldwave.

[Crispin]

I think there are some downloadable things for windows media player for free that do something similar.

[JibberX]

I'm not touching Windows Media anything...I want to use the output other than on the PC.... I'll look for the others suggested though.

[Sarkster]

As Stu says, Sound Forge = the daddeh

I use it for editing samples before importing them to Logic or creating custom sampler instruments. Its good ****

Although, I guess if you have a lot to convert and are really anal about quality, the tape deck, interconnects and soundcard are just as important.

Perhaps try and find a mate with a decent soundcard (like an M-Audio job)

[JibberX]

GoldenWave did the trick, as much as I'd love to defraud Sony, GoldenWave took the sound and made a pretty graphic and also made a file. Perfect.