Record Sound from Audio Tape (Casette) using Nero Wave Editor

Step 1: Connect your tape player to your sound card

If you have a tape player with a "line-out" jack, you should really use that, but you can use the headphone jack if line out is not there. Whatever you're using, connect it to the "line-in" plug on the back of your sound card.

Play a little bit of the tape to make sure it's coming out of the PC speakers -- if it is, you've hooked everything up right. NOTE: if you don't hear anything, there's a possibility that your "line-in" volume is just muted. Open up the Windows volume control (Start - Programs - Accessories - Entertainment - Volume Control), go to Options - Properties, make sure that "line-in" is one of the volume controls that is checked, and make sure that the line-in isn't muted.

On your tape player, make sure that any of the balance or bass/treble dials are set in the middle, so you'll get a true recording of the music. Also make sure any "bass boost" settings are off, so your final recording isn't muddy.


Step 2: Record a song

Open up the Nero Wave Editor and select the menu option Audio - Record. Use the default Sample Rate of 44100 Hz and 16-bit, and make sure that "Stereo Recording" is checked, and click OK. The Recording Console will initially start at a paused state. While the console is still paused, play a little of the tape, and make sure that the Input Level indicator goes up and down with the music that's playing. If not, you may have to change your audio input settings. You can do this by clicking Cancel, opening the Windows Sound Recorder (Start - Programs - Accessories - Entertainment - Sound Recorder), choosing the menu option Edit - Audio Properties, clicking the Recording Properties button (with the little microphone on it), and making sure that "line-in" is selected in the recording control (if it doesn't appear as an option, go to Options - Properties and select it as an available volume control).

Input level: Ideally, you want the whole song to stay in the -20 to -10 range on the Input Level indicator.

After you have the volume set properly, rewind to just before the beginning of the song, start playing the tape, and click the "Record" button on the Wave Editor Recording Console (the button with the little red circle). After the song is over, click the "Pause" button on the Wave Editor again (just to the right of the Record button, designated with 2 vertical lines) and click the "OK" button to insert the music you just recorded to a new Wave Editor file.


Choose the menu option File - Save As to save your recorded selection as a WAV file.

Step 3: Clean up the track

Now that you've created a WAV file, you'll want to clean it up a little. Here's how:


1. Select the entire track (menu option Edit - Select All) and "Normalize" it to 0-Db by choosing the menu option Volume - Normalize.

2. Select the entire track again (Edit - Select All) and choose the menu option Enhancement - Noise Reduction. Click OK. This should remove a good amount of the tape hiss that came over with the track (you never really want to set the Reduction Level in the previous step to 100%, because that can create a lot of strange audio artifacts in the track -- 70% is usually good enough).

3. Choose the menu option File - Save to save the file again.