I do not suggest deoxit, which is an aggressive cleaner, but the contacts will become gummed up and/or re-oxidize in a very short time. The only fix is to open it up, (unplug it) and spray straight electronics cleaner into it, and work it manually. This condition causes low signal, a distorted signal, or no signal at all. If it still does not produce a signal, these old cassette recorders are notorious for oxidized rec/ play switches, which are located internally on the PCB. The cassette level control should be somewhere near its mid point for a nice -3 dB average VU and peaks at +3 and the occasional +5 peak.

This maximizes your signal/ noise ratio, noise at a minimum. Have your PC level not too near its distortion point, but as high as possible. Make sure the level controls on the cassette are turned up a bit. Some cassette recorders need to be in rec/pause mode to receive the signal. Why isn't the signal strong enough for recording? Do I need a special kind of amplifier or sound card to do this? Is it just something that I shouldn't be doing?Ĭlick to expand.You have everything connected correctly. I even tried running the audio through my Schiit Fulla amp at full volume and full gain, and it still didn't come out sounding good at all. When I pump up the volume on my PC to distorted levels, the cassette will record something audible but it's very distorted and still very quiet. What is the best cassette recorder to record cassette tape to MP3 or other format on your Windows PC or Mac The article shows you how to record cassette tape. So much that the audio is barely audible over the noise floor.

When I go to record the audio, the input is very low. I have a Radioshack 3.5mm male to stereo RCA male adapter from the speaker port on the back of my PC running to the line input on the back of the tape deck. I'm using a Denon DRW-55 dual cassette deck for this. So I bought some blank cassettes (Sony HF 90 minute) to record the audio from my PC. I use the little adapter to plug my iPhone in to stream Spotify, but I can't stream Beatles music among other artists. So I have an older car with a cassette player.

Record cassette tapes to computer