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I have an old digital 12-track recorder made by Korg. The technology is quite outmoded now, but I'd like to capture some of the music I recorded on it.

There are ways to burn the music to CD's (with some effort), but I think perhaps the easiest way would be to find a way to take a mini-headphone signal into a computer and record it directly into .wav (or .mp3 or whatever).

Does anyone know how in general to take a signal on mini-headphone and have a computer capture the stream to a .wav?

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    This question is not appropriate for this site, because it's an audio engineering or recording question that has nothing to do with musical practice and performance.
    – Wheat Williams
    Oct 2, 2013 at 23:23
  • @WheatWilliams My apologies; do you know of a board that would be more appropriate?
    – Eric Auld
    Oct 3, 2013 at 0:41
  • Have you thought about using a cable to connect the mini-headphone output to your computer sound system's input? Set up the levels, and record (e.g. with audacity), then save as .wav or export to .mp3.
    – Kaz
    Oct 3, 2013 at 0:44
  • @Kaz My computer's sound system, such as it is, is just a set of speakers. Do I need to buy an amplifier of some kind?
    – Eric Auld
    Oct 3, 2013 at 1:07
  • If you plug your speakers into the computer, look next to where you plug them in. Often there is a mic connection there. If where you plug-ed the speakers in is green, the mic will often be purple - but not always.
    – Don Nickel
    Oct 3, 2013 at 14:11

2 Answers 2

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Any recording software will let you do this. Hook up a connection from your headphone out on your Korg to the line input on your computer sound card and use something like Audacity to record, sort out levels, remove noise etc. and produce wav files.

If you don't have a line input, you can use a mic input, but you need to make sure you don't introduce too much noise.

Ideally, set the output volume on the Korg as high as it will go without distorting - that way you get the greatest signal to noise ratio. Then set your input gain in order to avoid distortion or noise.

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Since the original is digital, I would try to find a way to transfer the data digitally. You are going to get quality loss (significant quality loss using consumer gear) if you run it through an analog line out and in to a line input or mic input on your PC. Any basic recording software can handle this and it can be done with a very cheap cable, but the quality will be poor relative to the original.

Korg actually has a guide here for exporting your individual tracks as wav files or the finished, mixed tracks. Basically it looks like you copy the tracks to a clipboard and then export the clipboard.

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