Centrance MicPort Pro for A-to-D conversion

[Bill Davis]

The micport wants to see a Mic level on an XLR mono connector.

The RCA outs of the cassette deck are undoubtedly LINE level.

So you need to to two things. Mix the stereo line level signal from the cassetted deck to Mono.

And convert that resulting mono signal to mic level.

A Radio Shack Y cord with two RCA male plugs and a single RCA Male or female will do the first step.

The second step requires PAD somewhere in the general range of 30-50db that has an RCA input (to match the mono end of the Y-adaptor) and that you can adapt to feed the XLR-Mic input of the Centrance. RS Used to carry small RED in-line attenuators that did this – but RCA to mini – NOT RCA to XLR. So you’d need to further adapt mini-plug to XLR which might be a hassle. XLR balanced Pads are significantly more expensive than non-balanced pads – but would do the same thing at the XLR end.

Probably $50 bucks worth of off the shelf parts at Radio Shack and if the holiday season temp help teens can’t guide you to the right pegs in the store – find a manager or assistant manager who likely can.

Good luck.

[Jordan Wolf]

“A Radio Shack Y cord with two RCA male plugs and a single RCA Male or female will do the first step.”

If he’s going to combine a stereo output to mono, he’ll need a resistive summing box of sorts. Otherwise there will be lots of nastiness.

A Google search should yield some cheap, yet effective results.

A read of this article from Rane is a good idea.

Wolf
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[Ty Ford]

yes, and yes, but why not make it even easier…

https://www.ionaudio.com/tape2pc

and the chassis has a pair of RCA jacks in the back for turntable preamp outputs and other -10 “line level” sources.

Regards,

Ty Ford

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Watch Ty play guitar

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[Naiche Lujan]

Glad to have found the missing link, a PAD. Thanks Bill.

I’m usually skeptical about those auto-digitizing decks, but if it has Ty Ford’s seal of approval, I just may check it out further. 🙂
The Gracenote addition is a nice touch so long as it works. Although I bet you can’t adjust the MP3 settings and .Wav option is notably missing.

Nice article on wye’s…thanks Jordan

Thanks to all.

Naiche

Mac Pro
Dual 2.8Ghz Quad-Core
16GB RAM
ATI Radeon 256MB
320GB 7200rpm
3TB 7200rpm Internal Software RAID0
Blackmagic Studio Card (working good so far)

[Ty Ford]

At that price, I bought one for my wife. She has a large cassette collection and no cassette player in her car anymore. It works pretty well. As good as it need to for cassette technology.

Regards,

Ty Ford

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Watch Ty play guitar

[Sam Mallery]

While the advice in this thread is all good, don’t forget that your Mac Pro has a stereo line-level 1/8″ input built right into it. All you need is a stereo RCA to 1/8″ stereo mini-plug Y-cable. You can get one at any Radio Shack or music equipment store for a couple bucks. Many people already have this cable in their home to use to plug an iPod’s headphone output into an input on their stereo system.