Ripping external 8-Tracks to my Computer
 

hey,
This year for my christmas gift to dad, I'm planning on transferring all of his old 8-track tapes and old 45? RPM Records onto mp3 [on my hard drive] and then burn them to cd.
However, to do this, I know I need some sort of sound card that will let me put in external plugs in so my comp can record the sound.
I'm a little confused on what sound card I should use and what programs as well to use.
[I plan on doing this either in linux or windows XP, but I'd prefer linux.]


My budget for a soundcard would be no more under $30, and I'll probably buy it from newegg.

If you know any online tutorials that would guide me through the process [of transferring the music] that would be appreciated as well.

Has anyone here even did this sort of thing ?

thanks for the help in advance,
keyshawn

if you have a microphone line in, you can get an adapter at radio shack that will let you attach the line out rca jacks from your 8-track player to your computer. Its not the best quality, but probably as good as you can do with a $30 sound card.

then you can use something like audacity or gnome-sound-recorder to record the 8-tracks to mp3 or ogg or whatever.

If you have a line in jack it will work just fine. Just make sure you ahve some program (like winamp pro or musicmatch) that can take a line in to record to a format. (There may be other better programs but I don't know, thats what I've used in the past. And for a cable just a get a 1/8" stereo to dual RCA's, it's a pain in the ass to do cause you have to manually tell the program to start and stop recording. I would check around used cd' places to find if they have some of the albums there..may cost $5 a used cd but saves alot of time and effort, plus they would sound better.

I'm trying that route, though some of the stuff my dad seems to be extremely rare - [i.e. some of his polkas]

Just a suggestion, if you are going to digitize these older analog and, probably, partially lost recordings, do not use the MP3 format. Instead, Ogg Vorbis, Wav, or some other format that does not use data loss compression. MP3 technologoy is great for bringing tacks with you, but if you're burning them to CD anyway, you're beter off not losing any more data then you already have missing in the existing technology.

Just a thought.

Peace,

Pierre

another vote for line in jack. get the cable from radio shack that has rca jacks on one end, and a 1/8" jack on the other. www.goldwave.com is a great free program to use for recording and tweaking. good noisefilters and stuff, which I'm guessing you will probably have on those 8 tracks.

my dad wanted to the same thing, he bought this

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...102-167&DEPA=0

and he said it works great

For the 8-tracks (my God, you still have a player that works?), you should be OK using the line-in jack on your soundcard. Make sure you use line-in, though, and not mic. The mic input on your soundcard has a crappy amplifier that will do nothing for your audio quality.

For the records, you're going to need an amplifier of some sort, connecting the turntable directly to the computer is going to sound like hell if it works at all. They make specialized phono preamps specifically for transferring records to digital. If that's not a possibility for you, you can probably get away with running the turntable through an amplifier, and running the line out from your amp into the computer.