http://www.mp3-box.org/mp3-the-beatles/
What is the best and easiest way to convert cassette tapes and vinyls to CD or MP3′s?
My dad’s record and tape collection is huge. I was looking through it and it’s really a shame that all that music is going to waste. Since Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, etc. won’t release their music onto iTunes, I need a way to get this awesome music onto a CD or straight onto my iPod. I want as little rumbling as possible. Which is better, software or expensive equiptment? Thank you in advance 
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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/index.php – screen-shots and photos to make it easy to follow.
- click the link to ‘cassette to CD’
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.
(works with any external audio including vinyl)
Hope this helps
The Beatles – Because MP3 – Lyrics and Interesting Facts about The Beatles