Hi,

Firstly I'd like to apologize in advance if my question isn't the most clearly stated.  I used to be a smart girl but now suddenly I don't feel so anymore so when answering just assume I know nothing (laughs).

It used to be that my desktop had a real dedicated sound card with tons of jacks from which to choose.  However, sadly my newer HP Elite Work Station desktop is only fitted with the two jacks on front one for headset and one for microphone line in or so it'd seem. Firstly the sound from these seems to me to be worse than horrific.  For speakers I'm using the Bose Companion 5's I think they were called which are lo longer produced.  These speakers have a microphone line-in jack on their volume control and if I run a patch cord from say a cassette deck to it I can hear the output but no recording program seems to pick it up through stereo mix.

Phew now with all that out of the way I'm wondering if any of you really smart and capable people have any thoughts on how one can make this work.  Is the best way forward to grab a USB sound card and install it and set it for input only? If so have you any model recommendations? And if I plug one of these things in is it gonna disturb the performance of the Bose speakers which are plugged in via USB for output?

I hope at least some of this makes sense.

Thanks again for putting up with me today I hate not feeling smart about a topic.

take good care.

Robin

I bet your speakers are just amplifying the sound from the cassette
directly. Try plugging your cassette deck into the microphone / aux plug
on your PC and hopefully a circuit in there will determine which to use
e.g. you don't want microphone amplification on the high level of the
cassette audio, or, you can look into your properties of the audio mixer
of the laptop and see if you can switch to "high level" input or auxiliary
type input, and there you can probably "monitor" the input with the
speakers, via an adjustment inside one of the pages of the recording input
of that item. Inexpensive sound cards with solutions to this kind of issue
are readily available, as well as such as

virtual audio cable which can direct any sound source into as much as you
could possibly need, all behind the scenes.

I use that all the time for many things. :)

Hopefully your laptop has a facility which will suit your needs.

and, I believe you are a bright girl, why not?


Curtis Delzer
HS
K 6 V F O
Rialto, CA

curtis@...

On 2/4/2020 6:22 AM, Robin Frost wrote:

Hi,

Firstly I'd like to apologize in advance if my question isn't the most
clearly stated.  I used to be a smart girl but now suddenly I don't feel
so anymore so when answering just assume I know nothing (laughs).

It used to be that my desktop had a real dedicated sound card with tons of
jacks from which to choose.  However, sadly my newer HP Elite Work Station
desktop is only fitted with the two jacks on front one for headset and one
for microphone line in or so it'd seem. Firstly the sound from these seems
to me to be worse than horrific.  For speakers I'm using the Bose
Companion 5's I think they were called which are lo longer produced. 
These speakers have a microphone line-in jack on their volume control and
if I run a patch cord from say a cassette deck to it I can hear the output
but no recording program seems to pick it up through stereo mix.

Phew now with all that out of the way I'm wondering if any of you really
smart and capable people have any thoughts on how one can make this work. 
Is the best way forward to grab a USB sound card and install it and set it
for input only? If so have you any model recommendations? And if I plug
one of these things in is it gonna disturb the performance of the Bose
speakers which are plugged in via USB for output?

I hope at least some of this makes sense.

Thanks again for putting up with me today I hate not feeling smart about a
topic.

take good care.

Robin

Hi,,

Awww you made me smile.

actually when I did try using the mic/line in jack on the desktop tower its resulting sound was hideous I mean awful which is what started this trek down the proverbial rabbit trail.  I spotted a reasonably priced sound blaster USB card which I consider purchasing to use solely for recording I just hope using such wouldn't impact my Bose speakers which plug into the pc via USB as well.  In theory one would think that I could keep the Bose as my default for output and use the sound blaster solely for recording and such but one never knows with such things these days.

Thanks for your reply I appreciate you.

Robin

On 2/4/2020 4:46 PM, Curtis Delzer wrote:

I bet your speakers are just amplifying the sound from the cassette
directly. Try plugging your cassette deck into the microphone / aux plug
on your PC and hopefully a circuit in there will determine which to use
e.g. you don't want microphone amplification on the high level of the
cassette audio, or, you can look into your properties of the audio mixer
of the laptop and see if you can switch to "high level" input or auxiliary
type input, and there you can probably "monitor" the input with the
speakers, via an adjustment inside one of the pages of the recording input
of that item. Inexpensive sound cards with solutions to this kind of issue
are readily available, as well as such as

virtual audio cable which can direct any sound source into as much as you
could possibly need, all behind the scenes.

I use that all the time for many things. :)

Hopefully your laptop has a facility which will suit your needs.

and, I believe you are a bright girl, why not?


Curtis Delzer
HS
K 6 V F O
Rialto, CA

curtis@...

On 2/4/2020 6:22 AM, Robin Frost wrote:

Hi,

Firstly I'd like to apologize in advance if my question isn't the most
clearly stated.  I used to be a smart girl but now suddenly I don't feel
so anymore so when answering just assume I know nothing (laughs).

It used to be that my desktop had a real dedicated sound card with tons of
jacks from which to choose.  However, sadly my newer HP Elite Work Station
desktop is only fitted with the two jacks on front one for headset and one
for microphone line in or so it'd seem. Firstly the sound from these seems
to me to be worse than horrific.  For speakers I'm using the Bose
Companion 5's I think they were called which are lo longer produced.
These speakers have a microphone line-in jack on their volume control and
if I run a patch cord from say a cassette deck to it I can hear the output
but no recording program seems to pick it up through stereo mix.

Phew now with all that out of the way I'm wondering if any of you really
smart and capable people have any thoughts on how one can make this work.
Is the best way forward to grab a USB sound card and install it and set it
for input only? If so have you any model recommendations? And if I plug
one of these things in is it gonna disturb the performance of the Bose
speakers which are plugged in via USB for output?

I hope at least some of this makes sense.

Thanks again for putting up with me today I hate not feeling smart about a
topic.

take good care.

Robin

I bet your speakers are just amplifying the sound from the cassette
directly. Try plugging your cassette deck into the microphone / aux plug
on your PC and hopefully a circuit in there will determine which to use
e.g. you don't want microphone amplification on the high level of the
cassette audio, or, you can look into your properties of the audio mixer
of the laptop and see if you can switch to "high level" input or auxiliary
type input, and there you can probably "monitor" the input with the
speakers, via an adjustment inside one of the pages of the recording input
of that item. Inexpensive sound cards with solutions to this kind of issue
are readily available, as well as such as

virtual audio cable which can direct any sound source into as much as you
could possibly need, all behind the scenes.

I use that all the time for many things. :)

Hopefully your laptop has a facility which will suit your needs.

and, I believe you are a bright girl, why not?


Curtis Delzer
HS
K 6 V F O
Rialto, CA

curtis@...

On 2/4/2020 6:22 AM, Robin Frost wrote:

Hi,

Firstly I'd like to apologize in advance if my question isn't the most
clearly stated.  I used to be a smart girl but now suddenly I don't feel
so anymore so when answering just assume I know nothing (laughs).

It used to be that my desktop had a real dedicated sound card with tons of
jacks from which to choose.  However, sadly my newer HP Elite Work Station
desktop is only fitted with the two jacks on front one for headset and one
for microphone line in or so it'd seem. Firstly the sound from these seems
to me to be worse than horrific.  For speakers I'm using the Bose
Companion 5's I think they were called which are lo longer produced. 
These speakers have a microphone line-in jack on their volume control and
if I run a patch cord from say a cassette deck to it I can hear the output
but no recording program seems to pick it up through stereo mix.

Phew now with all that out of the way I'm wondering if any of you really
smart and capable people have any thoughts on how one can make this work. 
Is the best way forward to grab a USB sound card and install it and set it
for input only? If so have you any model recommendations? And if I plug
one of these things in is it gonna disturb the performance of the Bose
speakers which are plugged in via USB for output?

I hope at least some of this makes sense.

Thanks again for putting up with me today I hate not feeling smart about a
topic.

take good care.

Robin

Robin,

It sounds like you are on the way to a solution, but it is not
impossible that the input jacks on your Bose speakers might work.
However, you will need to explore your sound settings when something is
plugged into that jack. The fact that your speakers are USB speakers
implies that they are already acting as a second sound card. The trick
might be that if they support inputs as well, you will have to switch to
the inputs associated with the Bose speaker in the record tab within the
sound settings on Control Panel. The Bose option, if there is one, may
not be active unless something is plugged into the input jacks. It is at
least worth a try. If you get another sound card, you are probably going
to still need to explore the sound settings to get things to work, so
doing some exploring in case you don't need the additional sound card
won't be a waste of time.

It is also possible that your Microphone input
on your desktop is still set for microphone and that it is overloading.
The sound settings might be able to change the function of that jack to
Line in which could clear things up. In addition, sometimes the
Microphone dialog has a check box for additional amplification.
Unchecking that box and lowering the volume level associated with it might
work as well. However, sometimes I have found the input jack on the front
of a computer is not stereo. Have you explored the back of your desktop?
There are usually additional jacks. If your workstation is a laptop in a
docking station, that can confuse matters further. Like you, I was more
comfortable when each jack had a function and you new what it was. On my
newest desktop, pretty much any jack can have any function. When I plug
in headphones, a dialog asks which device did I plug in and I select
headphones and then they work. I can use a microphone or headphones in
either of the front panel jacks depending upon how I answer the dialog.
In my case, some of the assignments are not easy to manage because the
dialog doesn't work well with screen readers. Anyway, I hope you are able
to get it figured out.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

-----Original
Message-----
From: all-audio@groups.io <all-audio@groups.io> ( all-audio@groups.io ) On
Behalf Of Robin Frost
Sent: Tuesday, February 4, 2020 4:02 PM
To: all-audio@groups.io
Subject: Re: [all-audio] Query about recording
audio cassettes to mp3 via the pc

Hi,,

Awww you made me smile.

actually
when I did try using the mic/line in jack on the desktop tower its
resulting sound was hideous I mean awful which is what started this trek
down the proverbial rabbit trail.  I spotted a reasonably priced sound
blaster USB card which I consider purchasing to use solely for recording I
just hope using such wouldn't impact my Bose speakers which plug into the
pc via USB as well.  In theory one would think that I could keep the Bose
as my default for output and use the sound blaster solely for recording
and such but one never knows with such things these days.

Thanks for your
reply I appreciate you.

Robin

On 2/4/2020 4:46 PM, Curtis Delzer wrote:

I bet your speakers are just amplifying the sound from the cassette
directly. Try plugging your cassette deck into the microphone / aux plug
on your PC and hopefully a circuit in there will determine which to use
e.g. you don't want microphone amplification on the high level of the
cassette audio, or, you can look into your properties of the audio mixer
of the laptop and see if you can switch to "high level" input or auxiliary
type input, and there you can probably "monitor" the input with the
speakers, via an adjustment inside one of the pages of the recording input
of that item. Inexpensive sound cards with solutions to this kind of issue
are readily available, as well as such as

virtual audio cable which can
direct any sound source into as much as you
could possibly need, all
behind the scenes.

I use that all the time for many things. :)

Hopefully
your laptop has a facility which will suit your needs.

and, I believe you
are a bright girl, why not?


Curtis Delzer
HS
K 6 V F O
Rialto, CA

curtis@...

On 2/4/2020 6:22 AM, Robin Frost wrote:

Hi,

Firstly I'd like to apologize in advance if my question isn't the
most
clearly stated.  I used to be a smart girl but now suddenly I don't
feel
so anymore so when answering just assume I know nothing (laughs).

It
used to be that my desktop had a real dedicated sound card with tons of
jacks from which to choose.  However, sadly my newer HP Elite Work Station
desktop is only fitted with the two jacks on front one for headset and one
for microphone line in or so it'd seem. Firstly the sound from these seems
to me to be worse than horrific.  For speakers I'm using the Bose
Companion 5's I think they were called which are lo longer produced. 
These speakers have a microphone line-in jack on their volume control and
if I run a patch cord from say a cassette deck to it I can hear the output
but no recording program seems to pick it up through stereo mix.

Phew now
with all that out of the way I'm wondering if any of you really
smart and
capable people have any thoughts on how one can make this work. 
Is the
best way forward to grab a USB sound card and install it and set it
for
input only? If so have you any model recommendations? And if I plug
one of
these things in is it gonna disturb the performance of the Bose
speakers
which are plugged in via USB for output?

I hope at least some of this
makes sense.

Thanks again for putting up with me today I hate not feeling
smart about a
topic.

take good care.

Robin

Robin,

It sounds like you are on the way to a solution, but it is not
impossible that the input jacks on your Bose speakers might work.
However, you will need to explore your sound settings when something is
plugged into that jack. The fact that your speakers are USB speakers
implies that they are already acting as a second sound card. The trick
might be that if they support inputs as well, you will have to switch to
the inputs associated with the Bose speaker in the record tab within the
sound settings on Control Panel. The Bose option, if there is one, may
not be active unless something is plugged into the input jacks. It is at
least worth a try. If you get another sound card, you are probably going
to still need to explore the sound settings to get things to work, so
doing some exploring in case you don't need the additional sound card
won't be a waste of time.

It is also possible that your Microphone input
on your desktop is still set for microphone and that it is overloading.
The sound settings might be able to change the function of that jack to
Line in which could clear things up. In addition, sometimes the
Microphone dialog has a check box for additional amplification.
Unchecking that box and lowering the volume level associated with it might
work as well. However, sometimes I have found the input jack on the front
of a computer is not stereo. Have you explored the back of your desktop?
There are usually additional jacks. If your workstation is a laptop in a
docking station, that can confuse matters further. Like you, I was more
comfortable when each jack had a function and you new what it was. On my
newest desktop, pretty much any jack can have any function. When I plug
in headphones, a dialog asks which device did I plug in and I select
headphones and then they work. I can use a microphone or headphones in
either of the front panel jacks depending upon how I answer the dialog.
In my case, some of the assignments are not easy to manage because the
dialog doesn't work well with screen readers. Anyway, I hope you are able
to get it figured out.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

-----Original
Message-----
From: all-audio@groups.io <all-audio@groups.io> ( all-audio@groups.io ) On
Behalf Of Robin Frost
Sent: Tuesday, February 4, 2020 4:02 PM
To: all-audio@groups.io
Subject: Re: [all-audio] Query about recording
audio cassettes to mp3 via the pc

Hi,,

Awww you made me smile.

actually
when I did try using the mic/line in jack on the desktop tower its
resulting sound was hideous I mean awful which is what started this trek
down the proverbial rabbit trail.  I spotted a reasonably priced sound
blaster USB card which I consider purchasing to use solely for recording I
just hope using such wouldn't impact my Bose speakers which plug into the
pc via USB as well.  In theory one would think that I could keep the Bose
as my default for output and use the sound blaster solely for recording
and such but one never knows with such things these days.

Thanks for your
reply I appreciate you.

Robin

On 2/4/2020 4:46 PM, Curtis Delzer wrote:

I bet your speakers are just amplifying the sound from the cassette
directly. Try plugging your cassette deck into the microphone / aux plug
on your PC and hopefully a circuit in there will determine which to use
e.g. you don't want microphone amplification on the high level of the
cassette audio, or, you can look into your properties of the audio mixer
of the laptop and see if you can switch to "high level" input or auxiliary
type input, and there you can probably "monitor" the input with the
speakers, via an adjustment inside one of the pages of the recording input
of that item. Inexpensive sound cards with solutions to this kind of issue
are readily available, as well as such as

virtual audio cable which can
direct any sound source into as much as you
could possibly need, all
behind the scenes.

I use that all the time for many things. :)

Hopefully
your laptop has a facility which will suit your needs.

and, I believe you
are a bright girl, why not?


Curtis Delzer
HS
K 6 V F O
Rialto, CA

curtis@...

On 2/4/2020 6:22 AM, Robin Frost wrote:

Hi,

Firstly I'd like to apologize in advance if my question isn't the
most
clearly stated.  I used to be a smart girl but now suddenly I don't
feel
so anymore so when answering just assume I know nothing (laughs).

It
used to be that my desktop had a real dedicated sound card with tons of
jacks from which to choose.  However, sadly my newer HP Elite Work Station
desktop is only fitted with the two jacks on front one for headset and one
for microphone line in or so it'd seem. Firstly the sound from these seems
to me to be worse than horrific.  For speakers I'm using the Bose
Companion 5's I think they were called which are lo longer produced. 
These speakers have a microphone line-in jack on their volume control and
if I run a patch cord from say a cassette deck to it I can hear the output
but no recording program seems to pick it up through stereo mix.

Phew now
with all that out of the way I'm wondering if any of you really
smart and
capable people have any thoughts on how one can make this work. 
Is the
best way forward to grab a USB sound card and install it and set it
for
input only? If so have you any model recommendations? And if I plug
one of
these things in is it gonna disturb the performance of the Bose
speakers
which are plugged in via USB for output?

I hope at least some of this
makes sense.

Thanks again for putting up with me today I hate not feeling
smart about a
topic.

take good care.

Robin