[red16v]

I’ve recently decided to power up the old Akai X201D and begin transferring my recordings from 40 years ago to my iMac. Powered it up - all ok, it’s like it was yesterday! Heads cleaned up nicely, the pinch wheel is still fine with no sign whatsoever of cracking etc. Demagnetised the heads etc. Put on a few test tapes to ensure all is basically well before starting the transfer process. By the way, a few of the tapes are suffering from sticky shedding syndrome and I discovered that wrapping some of that old plumbers very thin ptfe tape around the guides works wonders - for my tapes anyway!

I am using a Behringer analogue to usb converter and Audacity software on the iMac. But, in this configuration the Behringer does not have control of the “incoming” audio level. The software is telling me to use the iMac’s audio system controls to adjust the incoming levels. Further research informs me that this too does not work in conjunction with the Behringer (the pertinent controls are greyed out).

Now, my problem is that for most of the time the line level audio outputs from the Akai are overloading the ‘end to end’ playback chain and naturally this is leading to distortion on occasion. I can see quite easily on the Akai’s level meters that the signal is too great and I need to reduce it before it ‘hits’ the Behringer converter. How to do this? I used to have a cassette recorder which passed through ‘in to out’ signals via a level control - I used it to control the audio levels when I was recently transferring my old Betamax collection, but after completing that project I passed it on so it is no longer available to me (lesson learned!).

I was thinking of investing in a couple of in-line rca switchable attenuators in the first instance - give it a go and all that, what does the team think? Does anyone have any knowledge of a ‘cheap’ active device that might be suitable?