Optical audio in

[Gadolie]

Hi. I want to copy some old cassettes to CD. I am using an optical cable from my tapedeck Optical out jack to my G5's optical in port.
I'm using Spin Doctor. When I plug in, I get no sound entering my mac and I have "play sound through my speakers" checked. Spin Doctor is recording nothing. I've tried changing the sound preferences to no avail. Any help here would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[Vader]

Have you made sure the tapedeck has the optical input on or set to output optical or whatever?

 

[Gadolie]

There is no on/off setting that I cn see. Just a dust plug covering the port.
Basic Aiwa mini deck system.

 

[geese]

Are you trying to get a digital signal from an analogue source (cassette)? Its not going to work. Analogue sources like radio and tape has to be done through the phono or earphone outputs. The Optical digital is only good for CD and Minidisc.

 

[Gadolie]

Geese: are you saying that the Optical out port on my cassette deck does not provide a means to push analog sound into the mac? So if I read you right, I have to get a cable that will go from my decks phone jack, which is a little bigger than a mini jack, and has a mini 1/8" plug on the other end for this to work? My deck (for some stupid reason) does not have line-out jacks. I knew I was getting excited about "quality" sound
for optical cable for nothing!

 

[mnstr_trd_sd]

you can take your tape deck, run it to a analog to digital converter, then into your mac. I've used this method with vcr tapes to digitize them. you could find a good quality converter for about 100 bucks.

 

[Eastend]

One of the things I did with a old cassette deck was to hook it to a good equalizer and adjust the settings to the point that I thought it sounded good. I also purchased a used Pioneer DAT and ran it into the equalizer. So I record into the DAT and from there into the G5. The old DAT was cheap and it worked.

Brian

 

[combatcolin]

The only consumer tape that is optical is Philps DAT.

Which dies a short and painfull death thank god.

Never guess i dislike the company.

 

[Gadolie]

It works. I used a cable with mini jack on one end and 1/4" jack on the other.
The only thing is when listening through the speakers, it comes through on one side only. When I played it through iTunes it was on both sides
Anyway, thanks for your suggestions.