As a good music lover we have kept all the albums published by our favorite artists, filling the shelves of our music collection with numerous Audio CDs, cassettes and old vinyl records. Although these types of media are the result of the past, their value as collector's items or as the custodian of our past years is immeasurable: to prevent time from ruining them completely, we advise you to convert them to digital format, so that you can listen to them without the fear of ruining the delicate medium (real risk especially with vinyl records and cassettes). In this guide we will show you how to convert CDs, cassettes and vinyls to MP3, using the players (as well as the PC, smartphone or TV) available to us and the audio inputs of our computer. In case of absence of a reading device for old media, we will show you how to equip yourself with new fast conversion devices, so that you can convert all the songs and albums into a digital MP3 type file.
READ ALSO: Record music from the LP disc or from a cassette on the PC and convert to mp3
How to convert CD to MP3
The easiest to convert are undoubtedly the Audio CDs, since it is enough to have a player or a burner inside the computer and use a program suitable for high-quality conversion to bring all the tracks on the CD to comfortable MP3 files . If we do not have a reader or a burner on our computer, we can get an external USB burner like the one present here -> DVD CD burner Externo, Cocopa (19 €).Once inserted the Audio CD inside the player, we install on our computer the CDex program, available for free for Windows.
Once the program has started, we will see all the tracks on the Audio CD inside the interface; to convert them to MP3, simply click on the Extract tracks from CD to compressed audio files button, choose where to save the tracks and confirm on OK. In a completely automatic way the program will extract the tracks in MP3 format with variable bitrate, so as to offer the maximum conversion quality; if we are purists we can also configure the conversion by clicking on the gear icon and selecting the profile --alt-preset insane, in the Quality field.
If we wish to try other similar conversion programs, we invite you to read our guide on how to extract music from an audio cd and convert it to mp3 (Cd Ripping) .
How to convert cassette tapes to MP3
In order to convert the cassettes to MP3 we will first have to get an old Walkman or portable audio cassette player, connect a 3.5mm Jack-Jack cable to the headphone socket and connect the other end to the audio input on the back of each PC fixed (usually the blue or light blue plug).
If we don't have a portable cassette player, we can buy it on Amazon at really low prices, like the one present here -> DIGITNOW! Portable Cassette Recorder & Audio Cassette Tape (14 €). If instead we wanted to acquire the songs from a portable PC, we can get a Jack adapter like the one available here -> CSL - External USB 7.1 sound card (23 €).
Once the connection between the cassette player and the PC is made, we install Audacity on our computer, a free audio management program. From Audacity, select the right audio source by clicking on the top left of MME and replacing it with Windows DirectSound, then make sure that it is present next to it as the input source. Primary sound acquisition driver .
Alternatively we can also use MME with Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input, but only in case of incompatibility. Once Audacity has been prepared, we press the Rec button on the program and at the same time we press the Play button on our cassette player: if everything has been configured correctly, the program will begin to acquire the audio of the player, bringing the audio tracks into the digital track.
We wait to record the first side of the cassette, we pause the recording on Audacity, we turn the cassette and we also play the second side, restarting the recording (on Audacity) and playback (on the player). At the end of the acquisition we will have all the tracks of the cassette in a single audio track on Audacity: to divide them we will only have to press Play, listen to each song and press CTRL + B to switch from one track to another, so as to set a label (if we are able to understand the steps, we can also do it manually without listening to the whole file). Once all the labels have been added, let's go to the File menu at the top left, press on Multiple Export, configure the audio quality, choose the folder where to save the files and finally click on Export at the bottom.
If we did everything correctly we will see various MP3 tracks with all the songs acquired by the cassette.
How to convert vinyl records to MP3
The acquisition from vinyl records (i.e. the 45 rpm or 33 rpm) is very similar to the acquisition of the cassettes, but we will have to have a vinyl record player with 3.5mm headphone output, so that we can connect the same cable Jack already seen for cassettes. Many Hi-Fi systems of the time offered headphones output in this format, so that they could start the acquisition by connecting the cable to the audio input present behind the fixed PCs.If we don't have a vinyl record player, we can buy one suitable for driving from here -> dodocool 3-speed turntable (67 €).
This turntable also allows direct acquisition of the tracks stored on the vinyl (by connecting a USB stick and starting recording without a PC), but for greater control, we recommend connecting the audio jack to the rear socket of the turntable and connecting the other end to the Line IN input of the PC, so you can use Audacity: the steps are practically identical to the procedure seen for the cassettes, just start recording from the program, start playback by placing the head at the beginning of the inner edge of the vinyl and check the sound acquisition on Audacity. At the end of side A, we pause the recording, turn the disc over and restart the recording, so as to record also the side B.
At the end of the acquisition we set the various tracks in the mono-track using the CTRL + B keys, press on the File menu at the top left, select Multiple export, configure the audio quality, choose the folder where to save the files and press on Export below.
Conclusions
Whatever the format of our favorite album, we can import it in digital format (to be precise in MP3 audio files) using a free program such as Audacity, a 3.5mm Jack cable and a player suitable for the type of media (CD, cassette and vinyl). The procedure to follow is simple and fun to perform on any format, even if in the case of vinyl records and cassettes we will have to listen to all the tracks in order to acquire them (while on CD everything is much faster).If we also have VHS or videotapes, we can acquire them digitally by reading our guide on how to record a VHS videotape on your PC and DVD .
If, on the other hand, we have a large collection of DVD Videos or Blu-ray and we want to protect them from the wear and tear of time, we can read our article on Converting videos and DVDs to MP4 or MKV on PC and Mac, the best conversion program for optical video media.
