Mp3 faq - MP3 from a Album or Cassette

How do I make an MP3 from a Album or Cassette?

This is where that LINEIN input plug on your sound card comes into play. Normally, its where a microphone is plugged into your sound card. READ YOUR SOUND CARD MANUAL to see how this is done - you CAN destroy your sound card if you over drive your LINEIN. Never run a SPEAKER OUT into your LINEIN. Normally, you can run your LINEOUT of your cassette player to the LINEIN of your sound card. (this is NOT the headphones out on your cassette player - it is the LINEOUT).
Next, fire up a good recorder program on your platform. Set the source for the recording to AUX or MIC as necessary. Set the Record level and give it a test or two. Large differences in quality and file size can be attained by adjusting the bit rate and freq range. Note: files sizes of the generated wav files can be HUGE (200-300meg is not uncommon - make sure to have plenty of free disk space). From there it is as simple a converting the WAV file to a MP3 with an encoder.

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