Step One: Hooking up the Hardware

The key to obtaining the proper equipment is to have the same vocabulary between retailer and customer. Just as a car is also an automobile, auto, motor car, motor vehicle, gas-guzzler, and gas hog, many audio vendors use varying terminology for the same thing (I do it too). Sometimes though, you might ask for RCA plugs and a sales person might not know that they're the same as phono plugs, or worse ask you, "Do you mean phono connectors?" That's why I have pictures and alternate names; not to confuse, rather to help!

Cables & Connectors

Since I can't see what equipment you have, I'm going to have to educate you enough about audio equipment so that you can make an intelligent and informed choice about cables you'll need to connect your hardware.

Every piece of audio equipment has a gender; it's either male or female. When purchasing audio equipment you may be asked what gender you need (if you're not asked, then you'll be randomly offered one or the other). Male connectors have pins. Female connectors have sockets. Male connectors plug into female connectors.

Connector Terminology

Technically speaking, males are plugs and females are jacks. 'Jack' means 'socket' and sockets are female, but 'Jack' is a male name -- and people get this term confused. Additionally, I've seen a web site that said 'RCA male plugs' and 'RCA female plugs'. I would use the gender qualifier (male or female) at all times to make sure others understand what you mean.

Plugging Away

Good News! Your cassette recorder has an earphone jack; your computer has a jack; and if you use a mixing board, it will be loaded with jacks! That means all you need are male to male cables to hook these up! Let's look at some male connectors and identify them.

• Names: Phono plugs, RCA plugs. (Some websites, hoping to get search results, will use both terms such as "RCA phono plug" or "RCA (Phono) plug" and it means the same thing as "RCA plug" or "Phono plug". The website is just trying to get more hits)
• Gender: All the above are male connectors.
• What's important: The pin; note the shape. All have a smooth plug with a shield around the base. Note that the heads all do not look alike (they're from different manufacturers), but the plugs do. Gold-plated connectors are better, but you see what I am using. The cable color is unimportant; common combinations are red and white; red and black; and white and yellow.
• Uses: Often VCRs, DVD players and Stereo systems use these. So does the mixing board I recommended.

• Names: Stereo plug, 3.5mm plug, mini plug, headphone-style plug (I've even seen these adjectives lined up into "3.5mm mini plug stereo male", which may be excessive, but the website's trying to match what people call these plugs).
• Gender: All the above are male connectors.
• What's important: The pin; note the shape. Stereo plugs do not have that shield at the connector's base, they taper toward the tip of the pin and have one or more rings round the pin. Gold-plated connectors are better. The cable color is unimportant to the cable's performance.
• Uses: Computer microphones; earphone jacks on CD players and cassette players; these are the kinds of plugs that go in to your computer's sound card.

Why Are Gold-Plated Connectors Better?

Gold provides better insulation against system noise and radio frequency. If you are experiencing too much noise that's not on your tapes, you may need gold-plated cables. Likely sources of radio frequency include operating motors (such as a nearby lawn mower or fan; move the fan - don't buy a gold cable for that). Don't worry about your internal computer fans (which are used for cooling your system); I'm talking about oscillating fans and the like.

Other Kinds Of Connectors

There are many more kinds of connectors than these, but these two should work for you. I mention that there are others so that you won't be lulled into thinking, "Well, I'll just pick up any old cable and it will work for something I've got." You wouldn't buy just any old tires would you? You'd check the size and length of pants to insure they'd fit, wouldn't you?

What About Adapters?

An adapter plugs into a cable. Some adapters take one cable and make two (they're called splitters). There is minimal signal loss (sound performance loss) with an adapter. If you have some cables already lying about your home, then adapters are a fine choice. However, if you don't have any spare cables not already in use, why not just buy the cable you need without adapters? Cables cost from $3-6 and adapters can run $1-2. Why not buy a cable you need for $4, than a $3 cable and a $1 adapter? If you lose the adapter then you have a cable you can't use.

What Cable(s) Do You Need?

If you're wondering about cable manufacturers, Belkin makes both good audio and networking cables, but any brand will do. You can find cables in many places, from online retailers (although remember there's a shipping price, too) to places that sell sound equipment, like Radio Shack.

Assuming that all you want to do is plug in a cassette player with an earphone jack into the back of your computer, then all you need is Stereo Male to Stereo Male cable; however, keep reading; you may not want this cable after all (if you choose to use a mixing board; see the next paragraph). I don't recommend anything less than 1 foot long for practical reasons, and lengths in excess of 25' feet need to be powered to transmit the audio better. It's best to buy a length just a bit longer than you need (so if you need about 2 ft., a 3ft. cable is a good length). If you have a lot of excess cable, do not pile it up; coil it tightly. That excess cable can work as an antenna, bringing in all sorts of radio frequency. If you choose just to plug the cassette player directly in to your computer, plug the cable in to the 'line in' socket on your computer's sound card (if it's really low, try adjusting the volume as you would for head sets). So, for a five-dollar or so cable (Stereo Male to Stereo Male cable), you can plug your cassette player directly in to your computer and you can move on to the next step.

However, I do recommend a mixing board with a VU-meter. Why? Because preachers shout one minute, and speak quietly the next.

If you were recording store-bought music from cassette to your computer, you could easily plug straight in (after all, the sound has been prepared for mass distribution). You're probably dealing with little more than a live recording of the sermon; and you have very little control over a cassette player hooked straight in. A mixing board gives you a slider to adjust the level by hand before recording (and during, if needed).

If you need to (if he gets too quiet), you can nudge up the slider making him more loud; when he gets back to full volume you can adjust him down. Ideally, you'll forward the tape to where your preacher's at his loudest, set his level to 100% (see the picture to the left, it's moving from 0% to 100%; that is, keep him out of the red) and rewind before recording; normally, you'll get a better recording without distortion and you should not normally have to adjust most people (but some people use a very wide vocal range, so you may need to bump up the quieter portions of the sermon). When a VU-Meter is in the red, it means the audio is so loud that it's beginning to distort; the further into the red zone, the more distortion.

A mixing board gives you manually adjustable control over the recording. You can tell that you are sending a good audio level to the computer. If you were just using a cassette player and adjusting the earphone volume, you'd have to rely heavily on your ear to determine if you were getting distortion. With an audio board, you can both see (the VU-meter) and hear (the playback) a good audio level.

You might notice that many sites that sell mixing boards are geared to DJs and Public Address systems. That's because Disc Jockeys, both party DJs and radio DJs, have to control their audio to make the music sound as good as possible. I never was a dance party DJ, but I worked at a college radio station and for a Public Television station. People who create TV shows (either editing or recording) use audio mixing boards to control their sound, also. You want your sermons to sound good, too, when they go online; that's why I recommend a mixing board.

I'll show you a complete mixing board below, but it's good to see each piece to get an idea of how it works. You've seen a VU-meter (above); look at the sliders, which give you control over how loud the sound is. On the mixer to the right, the sliders start at 0 and go up to 10. Note that both the master volume slider (right) and tape volume slider (left; there is a slider in between the master and tape sliders) have to be raised (the master slider is bouncing up and down, but during recording it would be up). There's no "magic" position; you'll need to test out where the sliders cause audio to sound best. Again, you'll be looking at the VU meters and trying to keep them as close to the red as possible, without being in the red, when the audio is loud. Ideally, it's best to have the master volume slider set lower (or at least no higher) than the source (in this case, the tape volume slider). Your mixer will come with a manual, and it's a good idea to read it.

One more thing, this mixer has switches that can be tricky to the uninitiated. You can clearly read "Phono/Aux" and to its left it reads "Phono/Tape" (the flash obscures those words; there's a closeup below of the switch). If you hook up a cable from a cassette or other audio source and do not hear sound when you raise the slider (nor see a VU reading when you're sure there's audio), check those switches to make sure they're in the right position! Those switches control which source is sent through the mixer. You'll plug into jacks in the back of the mixer that should be labelled. Make sure your switch is switched to that label. You can plug into any of the jacks (honest) just remember where you plugged in.

Don't worry if the mixer is in mono or stereo output mode. Nobody talks in stereo.

If using a mixer (audio mixing board) still sounds complicated, it really isn't. However, if it makes you too nervous, as I said above, you can directly plug your cassette player into your computer.

• If you plug the cassette player directly to the computer, or if you plug the cassette player into the mixing board and then the mixing board into the computer, plug in to the 'line in' socket (on your computer's sound card).

My Setup

Rather than give you a theoretical setup, I'll show you the actual equipment I use as an example. Please note that the pictures are closeups, so the pictures are not to scale with one another; but hopefully you can mentally picture how this is hooked up.

		A Casette player. This is a Sony TCM-20DV and it's just barely larger than a standard-sized cassette tape. The model was so special that they stopped making it after I bought it. I've had it for about 3 years, without complaint. However, it runs on batteries, but has a DC in (3V) plug; so, I bought a power adapter. If you play back a sermon when the batteries are low, the preacher slows down!
		A Y Cable, (1) 3.5mm Male to (2) RCA Males. The 3.5mm plug (it's toward the top of the image) goes into the earphone jack of the cassette player (above), and the RCA males (toward the bottom of the image) plug into the mixing board's "tape in" (mixer is shown below). The image at the bottom of this page shows the cables plugged into the back of the mixer.
		A Realistic Stereo Mixing Console, model 32-1200B. I may at times just call this a mixer.
		Another Y Cable (1) 3.5mm Male to (2) RCA Males. Rather than showing you another cable picture (the two cables are identical), the photo to the left shows the cable's destination: my computer's "line in" socket on the sound card (note: it's just the black plug; the bottom end of the Y cable. The red one goes to another device not needed for what you're doing; I disconnected the speakers for this shot so you could see what the female socket looks like). Most recent computers have become more user friendly and identify where to stick in the plugs. At the very worst, it's one of the two that your computer speakers are not plugged in to (so you've got a 50-50 chance). The other end (with the RCA males) plugs into the mixing board's output (mine is labeled MAIN OUT; see picture below).

Guess what? Now you know how to hook up a turntable, cassette player, a police scanner or any other audio device to your computer! And once you're comfortable with what goes where, you can do this setup in just a few minutes. Now that we can get the sound into the computer, let's go to step 2 so we can install and configure our free software so we can record the audio!

Next: Step Two: Installing & Configuring the Software!

• Intro: How To Put A Sermon On The Internet
• Step Two: Installing & Configuring the Software
• Step Three: Recording the Sermon