What, in addition to a tape deck, can be used to convert audio tapes to CD's?

Question

I do not want to use my computer for this purpose. And where is the best place to buy such a contraption?

Answer 1

I would not recommend a CD recorder because in my experience, they are not great at analogue recording, also they require expensive AUDIO CD's not normal CDR's.

Put simply, you will need to connect your cassette player to your PC soundcard, then play the cassette whilst recording on your PC. A step-by-step guide is available at:
http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/diy...
The recording software is the key, there are some free software downloads available at:
http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/downloads.p...
I have used ‘Magix Audio Cleaning Lab’ and ‘Audacity’ – Audacity is particularly popular since it is free!
If you record to WAV format, expect file sizes of around 10MB per minute, or 1MB per minute for MP3 (at 128kbps).
Once you have your digital versions of the recording on your PC, simply burn them on to a CD (Nero burning software or similar..). If you use Magix Audio Cleaning, the software will burn an audio CD for you without needing additional software (assuming you have a CD writing drive of course!)
You can also download a free PDF version of the step-by–step guide from the download page mentioned above, the guide is complete with diagrams and screen-shots.
See - no contraption required except where you don't have access to your soundcard (eg.laptop - see guide for more details)

Answer 2

A stand-alone CD recorder. Most of these come with an analog input to plug in a tape player or turntable (as long as they're connected through a home stereo or some other preamp). You can easily find a recorder on Ebay.