What's the best (and cheapest) way to transfer music cassettes to mp3 with the best possible sound quality?

Question

The songs in question are EXTREMELY obscure, unavailable anywhere else (either through legal or illegal channels), and I find that just piping it through my sound card generates a distorted, low-quality sound.

Answer 1

Danijel gives the basics, but it seems that you've already followed this sort of procedure. Why is your recorded sound so distorted?

The answer is one of two possibilities. 1) You are feeding the cassette player signal into a sound card microphone input. Don't do this! It must be a Line In input connector. 2) Maybe your Line In input has been damaged. This is rather common with laptop computers.

Solutions: If you must use a microphone input, test it with a real computer microphone to see if it works OK. If yes, you can buy an attenuator cable that attenuates the signal by 30 or 40 dB so that it doesn't overload the mic. input. (I've forgotten where to buy, DigiKey.com or Mouser.com or you could try RadioShack.)

This will work, but not very well because most mic. inputs will vary the gain for voice recording.

If you don't have a Line In input or you do but it is damaged, then you could buy an external sound card box with a USB2 connection. I have used a Creative Labs Audigy 2NX box and Goldwave recording software. The online Goldwave manual has a step-by-step for recording LPs which is about the same as cassettes.

Answer 2

I use a program called "Magix Audio Cleaning Lab" that I got from Best Buy for about $40. It's awesome - it not only allows you to record into the computer from any analog source (cassette, turntable, etc.) but after you make the recording the program can also clean up any problems with the sound (tape hiss, record clicks and pops, turntable rumble), then you can equalize it, add effects, expand dynamic range, then create a new MP3, WMA, WAV, or OGG file with it or burn it directly to a CD. When you're done others will never know that those songs came from cassettes or vinyl - unless you tell them.

Also, as Danijel and Tom H both said, make sure you use a LINE input and not a MIC input.

Answer 3

Line out of the cassette player and line into your sound card then use Microsoft free sound recorder program that comes with Windows to record and save the music.

Answer 4

listen to this
1.find a cassete player
2.find a cable that can connect your cassete player to your computers line in
3.in your control panel go to sound controls and set up a volume for your line in
4.find a sound recorder program that records any sound that goes trough your sound system like nero sound editor
5.press play at cassete player and record at your computer and later save as wav thenlater you can convert to mp3

Answer 5

Use Limewire to download them!!