Travel Technology - recording cassette tapes to PC faster than 1:1

Hi....

I have 50-100 cassette tapes that I would like to make MP3s ,

is there anyway to "rip" them to MP3s ,
Hopefully faster than playing them at regular speed and recording them ,

I could even live with each side of the tape being a single MP3 of 15-20 minutes.

Any ideas ?

Thanks Rally

yes I am stuck in the 70s and 80s.....

Many tape decks I worked with had fast dubbing for cassette to cassette recording, and also output the fast dub. This could be digitized and then edited back to normal speed using typical music editors. I think typically the fast dubbing was only 2x though so not a huge increase, and there's probably some quality loss as well. And you'll still have to watch over it and keep switching out the cassettes, which is the major hassle IMO in these types of conversions.

I do wonder how such high speed dubbing could get good high frequency response given that tape already has issues getting flat response above 15khz at 1x speeds.

... Hopefully faster than playing them at regular speed and recording them.....You have to use a high-speed cassette copier (these copy 90 min cassette in 5 min). Connect the audio out to your PC and record the audio in high-speed and save it to a file.
Then use winamp pace maker plugin and winamp diskwriter to slowdown the song in about 5 seconds. This gets normal speed and about the same sound quality as the original cassette. Conversion to MP3 will take a bit longer.
If you don't own a high-speed copier then you can get one for under USD 100, e.g. http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/ele/972677155.html

yes I am stuck in the 70s and 80s.....

If that were so then you would be recording the PC to casette tape. ;)

If that were so then you would be recording the PC to casette tape. ;)Boy does that bring back memories :eek: