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  • Many people have a garage, attic or closet full of old cassette tapes they don't listen to anymore. You want to transfer your music to a more contemporary format like CDs, but don't know how. You'll be glad to hear that putting your collection of old cassettes onto CDs is an easy process that requires almost no specialized computer knowledge.

    Proper Software

    You will need software to record the audio to your computer, as well as a program for burning music to a CD. Audacity is an excellent program to record audio to your computer, with a five-star editor rating from CNet. The program is free, and works on all major operating systems. Whatever program you are using to listen to music, be it iTunes or Windows Media Player, should take care of burning CDs.

    Connecting Hardware

    Hook up your cassette player. Connect your cassette player to your computer. This requires a line jack, which you can get at any electronics store. Find the "line out" socket on your cassette player and the "line in" or "microphone" jack on your computer. Connect the two with your line jack.

    Recording the Cassette

    Open your music program on the computer. Click the "File" drop down menu, then select "Save Project As" to create a new project. Press the round red button on the cassette player to start recording. Next, press the play button on your cassette tape player. Allow all of one side to record, then press the yellow square stop button.

    Separating Tracks

    Unless you want the entire side of a tape playing as one continuous track, you will want to separate your recording into tracks; this is done by adding labels. Click the "Project" drop down menu, then select "Add Label at Selection." You can then add as many labels as you like by clicking where you want the break in the track to go.

    Exporting Tracks

    Exporting your tracks converts them to MP3 format, as well as making them into separate tracks. Click the "File" drop down menu, then select "Export Multiple." Select as your file format either MP3 or AAC. This creates several new tracks from the single long track that you recorded.

    Burning Your CD

    Open your new MP3 tracks in your digital media player. Insert a blank CD into your computer. Select all of the tracks that you wish to put on to CD. Then burn these tracks to CD.

    Source:

    Audacity Wiki: Transferring Tapes and Records to Computer or CD

    iLounge forum: How Do You Transfer Cassette Tapes to MP3 / AAC files?

    More Information:

    Audacity at SourceForge

    CNet

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