Ok. Alot of the people who use these boards seem to be very educated about computers and tech stuff (Geeks ). Please bear in mind that, try as I might, I'm not. I'm learning, but I've got a long way to go...

So here's my question: I recently learned that you can record old cassette tapes to your hard drive through your sound card, then convert (if needed) and burn them to a cd. I found some info on how to do it on the web, but am still unsure of some things.
My sound card came in my HP Pavillion 521n, and it's a VIA AC'97 Audio Controller (WDM). Looking at the back of my pc, it has a "line in" jack right below the speaker out. It looks like a 1/8 headphone jack would look.
One of the methods I saw somewhere said you could run a line from the headphone jack on the back of your tape player, into your sound card, and then use a recording program to record the sound. Would this work? Is there a "wire" you can buy that has the 1/8 type plug on both ends? Am I in way over my head?

I know I will prob. have to do some messing to get sound levels right, but I just want to make sure I am on the right track before I go plugging stuff into my pc...

I have alot of books on cassette that are starting to degrade pretty badly, and I would love to be able to get them on to CD before they are gone... I have found a company that will do the transfer, but they want $25+ each to do it, plus shipping. I have too many I want done to pay that.

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated

Thanks, Compucore. I read that if you use the actual speaker out on your tape player / radio, you could damage your pc. To go from the headphone jack to my pc I would need a line with a 1/8" stereo plug on both ends.

I'll give it a shot after I find the wire and report back on my progress ( or lack of! ).

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Yeah, I hoped when I looked at the back of my pc I would see little red and white inputs for the rca type of cables, but no luck...
I think I found what I need, though. It's a simple cable with a 1/8" stereo plug (male) on both ends. I would post a pic, but seems AOL is having trouble (I can't access my home page and all my images are an X right now...).

One of those will work. Radioshack has them, as will most electronic stores. What program and format are you recording too? I would go ahead and convert them into mp3s, either VBR or 160 CBR. Those options should be in whatever converting program you use. 160 might be a bit over kill for a tape, its almost cd quality. However, if you want them to play in most cd players, you'll need to leave them as wave files. Good luck with that project, I'm working through my dads lp collection. Only 6 orange crates to go!

I'm going to try to find a free recording program, I've seen several on the net.

I may already have something that will work... I know WM9 won't (i don't think). I also use real player (prob. won't work) and music match jukebox (I think it has a record option, but I'm not sure...). I have winamp, but it's not installed. I could always load it up if it would work.

Problem with these is, they are all media players. If any have recording, it's prob. not very good.

Of course, I have the sound recorder that comes with XP, but I've never used it much. It has a time limit, no?

My best bet might be to find a dedicated recording program and use it.

I have a few different programs I use for conversion, but dBpowerAMP is my favorite, so I'll prob. use it to make them wave files if needed. I do most of my burning out of WM9, and it converts files to WMA anyway. But if they aren't recorded correctly before it converts them,the cd won't play.

No big deal. Once I get the set up right, I can mess with recording and conversion until I figure it out. But if anyone want's to recommend a good (free) recording program I can download, I'm always open to suggestions!

Here's a quick list of my audio tools, in case it helps (or if I already have what I need and just don't realize it!);

Cdex151- CD extractor / wave mp3 converter
Gap123- game music extractor
WavEdit- wav file editor
AldosWave edit- umm...wave editor
Mp3 splitter/joiner- mp3 editor
Sound recorder- windows recording program
dBpowerAMP- all format sound file converter

And my media players are listed above.