I wanted to try to put something from a cassette into a digital mode.
I had a stereo cable available. and plugged one into a portable cassette player's earphone jack and the other end into the Audio In jack on my G5 iMac.

I booted up Audacity and it recorded fine, but I couldn't monitor what it was recording. Of course, the jack on the cassette player cuts off the speaker.

Have done something wrong? I recall having done this before, but am puzzled as to how to monitor what I'm recording.

TIA

it'll be a software preference, in Audacity - like the "Monitor" On or Off on a Garage Band Track.

Look for "Monitor Input" or something like that, in Audacity (I don't know that particular software) but all others, from Logic, to Pro-Tools, to FCP have audio input monitoring preferences, or check boxes.

I can't test this at the moment because my tape deck it acting up. Look in Audacity's preferences for the Audio I/O section. Try enabling hardware playthrough, software playthrough or both. I'm having difficulty getting this to work on my system but it could be an issue with the mic I am using.

KingFish and Slydude are correct. Audacity has Hardware and Software Playthrough functions...that should do the trick, albeit with a few ms of latency. In the Preferences > Audio I/O section.

PERFECTO!

Thanks a million. Yes, I should have looked there first (d'oh!)

This is a great place.

I didn't find the documentation very helpful on this issue. I only thought to look for that function because Amadeus II offers a similar feature.