The simplest would be throwing those out and downloading mp3's from one of the filesharing systems. Then, you can burn CDs out of those mp3's if needed. That is faster, cheaper and you will get better quality comparing to the cassettes you have. There are other methods that are more time and money consuming but that would make sense only if you have something unique that cannot be found as a torrent.
PacMan,
I had the same issue a few years back. Had a bunch of family stuff on tapes from when I was real young (early 70's) - so the option was to let the tapes degrade and die, or back them up.
I bought a male/male plug from radioshack (get the stereo one if it's music you're backing up) and using the line-in on my sound card, I managed to get very decent (albeit noisy like the tape) copies made using a simple windows recorder. All done in real time though - so be prepared for some large wave files and a lot of time.
There are services that do it as well (search yahoo under backup cassette to CD) and there's a guide here (be warned, its a talking site)
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/6/prweb532727.htm
Good luck
I had the same issue a few years back. Had a bunch of family stuff on tapes from when I was real young (early 70's) - so the option was to let the tapes degrade and die, or back them up.
I bought a male/male plug from radioshack (get the stereo one if it's music you're backing up) and using the line-in on my sound card, I managed to get very decent (albeit noisy like the tape) copies made using a simple windows recorder. All done in real time though - so be prepared for some large wave files and a lot of time.
There are services that do it as well (search yahoo under backup cassette to CD) and there's a guide here (be warned, its a talking site)
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/6/prweb532727.htm
Good luck
