Cassette tapes. What do I do with them?

[progressoid]

I have over a hundred of them.

Can they be recycled somehow? I hate throwing stuff away.

[leftyohiolib]

1. goto ask.com and type "what to do with old cassette tapes"

[progressoid]

7. I did that!

Some are kind of cool projects. I just don't have the time or desire to do it so ...

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. maybe

you just need to find a recycling center that will take them.

http://myzerowaste.com/2013/07/how-to-recycle-vhs-tapes-and-audio-cassettes/

[progressoid]

5. Yeah!

That's what I'm looking for.

Now if I could just get to Bristol somehow....http://www.ems-europe.co.uk/location-map/

Seriously though, good idea. I used to know a guy at a local video production place. I'll call and see what they do with their old VHS tapes.

[Coventina]

3. Give them to someone with a 90s car.

My husband just bought a 97 Honda Accord with a cassette player, and he's looking for cassette tapes.

Much to my chagrin, one of his that he found was an old Twisted Sister cassette!

[RebelOne]

4. I'll take them. I have a '99 car with cassette and DVD players. n/t

[progressoid]

11. Looking for anything in particular?

[progressoid]

10. What kind of music is he looking for?

[Coventina]

12. On cassette tape, he'd be looking for hard & classic rock, probably.

The Twisted Sister tape is your clue, he was delighted to unearth that!

Although, I know he has cassette tapes of bands like the Ramones and Social Distortion as well.

Nowadays, his favorite bands are Cake, Mumford & Sons, White Stripes, and the Killers.
But, you aren't going to find them on cassette tape!

[progressoid]

14. Well, I'll round them all up and see what's there.

Some of these are mine and some were my brothers.

We're in the middle of some serious spring cleaning.

[Brigid]

20. Did somebody say Twisted Sister?

[jakeXT]

6. Not the White House lawn

According to the Secret Service, one individual, identified as Evan J. Graham, allegedly chucked a cassette tape over the North Fence Line.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/05/white-house-on-lockdown-for-the-2nd-time-this-week/

[shenmue]

8. Ion makes an adapter you can plug into a computer

You can dub them to an mp3 that way.

[kentauros]

18. I wondered about the quality of that,

having seen them on Amazon. Also, I don't want mp3s. Wav, FLAC, or Ogg are the only formats I'll accept these days

[hunter]

26. Done properly, they'll still sound like a cassette. I think that's part of their charm.

It's nostalgia for me. I digitize analog music sources pretty much as they are, often using the actual devices they were most commonly played on. My Sony Walkman cassette player still works, so does my university music library turntable, which was "surplus" and very solidly built.

I trained my ears too well to hear noise reduction, compression, and other artifacts of conversion and these artifacts become a distraction.

I'd rather hear a 78, 45, LP, or cassette sounding like it did on the original mechanical analog source, not as something incomplete and digested through heavy-handed digital filtering.

Heavy-handed filtering on commercial "Remastered from Original Studio Tapes!" digital music is especially annoying to me.

[kentauros]

27. I'm not an audiophile.

I did grow up with analog, and personally, hated all the scratches, pops, and everything else that goes with analog, whether it's tape or vinyl. If you love it, great. I don't. But I can tell the difference between mp3 and FLAC, so the latter is my preferred choice.

If the Ion device can't convert to FLAC, then I don't want it. If it simply plays the signal into my computer, allowing me to convert it however I like, then that would be fine. I have some tapes from when I did radio that I'd like to convert.

[hunter]

28. If I was an audiophile...

... I'd have a top of the line turntable, fat speaker cables, and probably a tube amplifier too.

I don't.

I'm pretty much anti-audiophile because most of my music stuff comes from thrift stores.

I do remove pops and clicks from records.

If you just want to digitize tapes of old radio broadcasts, the least expensive way, providing you still have a player, is a simple audio cable direct to the aux sound input of your computer (if it has one.) For software I use Audacity and Linux. I haven't messed with any of the "simple" solutions, those cassette-turntable combinations that have their own software and usb output.

Since the the insides of most computers are notorious for leaking electrical noise into recordings, a good sound-to-usb cable can be helpful. Some of the $10 versions are crap, some are quite good. I'd never pay more than a $100 for one, maybe not even $50 since I'm no audiophile.

newegg.com has many pages of usb sound adapters.

[kentauros]

29. Thanks for the information!

I did a little research, and I can record to one of my media players with the proper line-in cable.

The biggest problem isn't so much that it can only record in WMA format, as it is that my one working cassette deck has a problem with the right channel outputting at least 20% low. It's been that way for years, and partly why I haven't used it in at least as long. Fixing it would probably cost more than buying a decent-quality deck. Or, I find a service that does conversions.

[pokerfan]

9. Put 'em on Craigslist

Free to the first person willing to take them all. You might be surprised how many people are still driving cars with tape decks.

[progressoid]

13. I tried to give some away at our garage sale on Saturday.

No takers.

And many are "mix tapes" that came from my brother's estate. I'm not sure what is on them so I don't want to just hand them out to anyone.

[hlthe2b]

15. Send one to everyone you know under age 20...

and ask their parents to take pictures upon opening....


(The look of befuddlement alone, should be worth it.... Oh, and if you manage to convince at least one of them that this is the new "up and coming" technology for music, you've won the generational lottery... )

[Kali]

21. !!!

[Paulie]

22. It's been done!

http://m.

[progressoid]

24. thanks, I was looking for that.

[hlthe2b]

25. ha ha ha! That's great!

[Sissyk]

16. Find someone that is graduating college this year

with a music/business degree. lol!

A friend of mine is decorating her son's graduation party by hanging old lp's, eight tracks, cassetts, c/d's, ipod, etc. It is looking soooooo cool right now.

[NV Whino]

17. Freecycle

Look up one in your area. I got rid of LPs, cassettes, and 8 tracks.

[LynneSin]

19. I sold a box of them to a place at my local flee market that sells stuff like that

There is still a market out there for cassettes but you're not going to get rich off of them.

[Inkfreak]

23. Make a mix tape for your SO. Be sure to stop recording when the commercials come on