Need software to record from external system

Question

Want to record from external source such as audio cassette to the computer,what software is the best,is kazam any good.

Answer 1

+1 for Audacity but if you need a bit of Control take a look at ! Ardour

Answer 2

If you have used recording software in the past, such as Sony Sound Forge, Adobe Audition, or if you never used such recording software you may wish to give a chance to Audacity.

With Audacity you may choose which sound signal you wish to record from: Line Input, Microphone or any available in your sound card. This will create the waveform when recording and when finished you will be able to adjust audio levels by mastering your audio with useful plugins included in the installation.

From the site:

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

1. Record live audio.
2. Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
3. Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
4. Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
5. Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
6. And more! See the complete list of features.

Audacity is included in the default software sources of Ubuntu and you can install it from Software Center.

Illustrations

First of all we need a common "Y" cable with 1/8" stereo miniplug and 2 RCA male connectors as this:

I am going to use a common TEAC cassette deck player with pitch like this:

(Note: The Audio Mixer is not needed and the snake is optional...)

In the back side of the cassete deck player, I am going to plug the both the RCA male connectors in the corresponding RCA female OUTPUT connectors as shown in the next picture:

Remember that "the corresponding RCA female OUTPUT connectors" may read something like "OUTPUT", "Line Out", "Out", etc.

After that, we need to plug the 1/8" stereo mini in the other edge of the cable, to the corresponding "Line Input" of the computer. I am using a Desktop computer so I am going to plug it in the Blue jack as shown in the next 2 pictures (hand thanks to Jessi Yems)

Audacity usually comes ready to record from "Line in". If you experience some problems when getting the audio signal from line in, try changing the default line input IN AUDACITY. After which you can check your sound settings in the Input Tab in order to see if the sound card is getting some sound signal as in the next example:

If you need further support don't hesitate to leave a comment. Thank you.

Good luck!