Transferring music on cassette tapes to CD's

[Tilli]

So, yeah I was wondering if it is possible to do this via my computer and if so how would I go about it? I have a bog-standard laptop with Windows XP on it but I have absolutely no idea how to go about it or what leads etc. to get - help!

 

[neutral]

It's definitely possible to do something like this with a PC. I've been in the process of ripping my records to the computer for awhile now, it's kind of tedious though so I seem to take a lot of "breaks".

Anyway, what you do is connect a tape deck to the line-in jack on your sound card, record the tape on the computer as a WAV file, clean up/edit the files if needed, and burn the WAVs to CD. The only thing is, your laptop may not have a line-in jack.


Anyway here's a couple of links with instructions.

http://www.g4tv.com/callforhelparchive/features/22210/Transfer_Tape_to_CD.html
http://www.nsftools.com/misc/TapeToCD.htm

 

[Elvis]

The PlusDeck 2c (http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/7a8d/) would be a great solution for a PC. however with a laptop, you'd probably need to get a USB drive enclcosure (something similar to this http://www.meritline.com/usb20drivkit.html) in order to use it externally.

 

[neutral]

Use it to archive your old cassette tapes of 80s hair bands into digital media files for playback on your PC.

 

[Tilli]

Thanks for the advice and links neutral and Elvis

80's Hair metal bands

 

[ntalwar]

Does your sound card have 1 or 2 input jacks? Are they 1/8"?
You can simply buy a $2 adapter to convert the RCA to 1/8".

Here's an example:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/General/Accessories/Cables?sku=333068

There's also a stereo version of it.
A local music store should have this in stock.