Headphone out to line in

[Ty Ford]

Tony,

The headphone jack on your cassette player isn’t really designed to drive the input of the recorder you have. You will probably be able to get audio from one to the other but frequency response may suffer and you may have more noise.

Here’s a better solution. One that’s actually designed to do the job. I own one.

https://www.ionaudio.com/tape2pc

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Richard Crowley]

1) LEVELS – The “headphone level” out of a piece of consumer gear is close enough to “line level” (or at least “consumer line-level”) that it is reasonably compatible. It is the least of your problems. I would start with the output level of the player set for somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 full scale just to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It is most critical to optimize the player output level (for max signal before distortion) to maximize the SNR. Then adjust the record level to accommodate the output level of the player.

2) QUALITY – The quality of headphone outputs is typically not as good as the proper line-level output. Specifically, they tend to be more noisy as a “line output” because they are optimized for low-impedance loads. It is always preferable to use designated line-level outputs vs. any kind of headphone output. This is pretty much universal for all equipment on the planet.

3) PINOUT – The 3.5mm or 1/4 inch output from a headphone jack has left on tip, right on ring, and ground on sleeve. Whereas a 1/4 inch line-level input on a pro recorder may very well be balanced (differential signal on tip/ring and ground on sleeve. Plugging a stereo headphone output into a balanced line-level input will deliver the difference between the left and right channels. This is almost certainly NOT what you are after. So you must use proper cables/adapters to at minimum break out the left and right signals from the 3.5mm mini-phone plug. Adapters and cables to do this are available at minimal prices, and even at Radio Shack (at inflated Radio Shack prices).

4) STEREO/MONO – You didn’t say whether the cassettes are mono or stereo. If they are mono, then summing the left + right outputs from the cassette playback is probably NOT desirable. Listen separately to the “left” output and the “right” output and select the better one. Note that this preference may change from tape to tape, and even from side A to side B of the same tape cassette.

OTOH, listening to L+R summed (or even better L-R differenced) is a good aid to azimuth adjustment for a mono tape….

5) AZIMUTH – Cassettes are most notable for really really terrible azimuth control, even with premium $10 cassettes and “professional” $2500 equipment. The pinnacle of cassette equipment (Nakamichi Dragon) features a servo motor that CONTINUOUSLY adjusts the azimuth while the tape is playing to maintain optimal azimuth. If you are going for only “transcription grade” transfers from your cassettes, then you can probably get away without bothering with azimuth, using a “walkman” style player. But if you are aiming for any kind of quality, you MUST use something that you can adjust the azimuth for each tape before starting the dubbing. This applies to both mono and stereo tapes, and is even more critical for stereo.

If you MUST use the walkman player, consider the copies to be “working copies” and not archival quality. And by no means discard the original tapes.

[Tony Connoly]

Thank you all very much. This has been very informative.

[Jordan Wolf]

Tom,

The Whirlwind unit will balance the signal and make it “mic level”. The ProCo unit should do the same thing, although from what I remember, it does not have inputs pads like the Whirlwind one does (very handy to taming hot signals).

As long as there is sufficient headroom in the circuitry, it doesn’t really matter what “level” anything is. The only thing you may notice AFTER the signal is balanced is that there is a teeny bit more noise from added preamp gain. But, that depends…so try it and see if you go that route.

Wolf
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