No matter what type of analog media you’re converting, you need software to digitize it. The steps for converting your old recordings vary on the formats and equipment you have, but here’s a general outline of the process and the equipment you may need. In addition to making files that play on your smartphone or media server, digitizing your analog audio creates an electronic archive you can store online for safekeeping.
Converting the audio to digital formats for personal use is much simpler than it used to be, though, thanks in part to gadgets that connect to a computer’s USB port. A huge amount of the world’s audio has been digitized, but many veterans of the Analog Age still have out-of-print albums, lectures and other content locked on vinyl records, cassettes and CDs.
