where can I get a free software download to convert my analogue music to digital format ?

Question

For instance, I have a lot of music on records (vinyl records) and on audio cassettes. I' like to convert all of it into digital format to be able to preserve collection.

Answer 1

If you want a VERY good conversion , there are vinyl to Digital units that are made for this purpose( They work , look and play same as Record/Vinyl Players, you can even double duty them as Vinyl players direct to a Digital audio unit as DJ).
You can get them for under 100 dollars, and they play as is, and plug directly into your PC audio card.
From there it records tracks as WAV files.
Getting software for the conversion process is easy, such ones as ABSOLUTE RECORDER, or any number of things from ZD NET do the job, however I recommend ROXIO Suite for Processing audio and making CD cuts of Vinyl,

Answer 2

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.php
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.

Answer 3

Audacity is a free recording program.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net