I don't know if anything like this has been posted here before. If so, well, here it is again.

Here's something I discovered that's a quick and easy way to put a digital file of cassette tapes onto your computer. Olympus makes a digital voice recorder, model WS-311M, which I am using to transfer cassette tapes to my computer. You will need an audio cable with a mini plug on each end if you use a boom box or Walkman type tape player. You plug one end of the mini plug cable into the headphone jack of your boom box or tape player and the other end into the microphone port on the voice recorder. Press record on the voice recorder and play on your tape player. The entire side of the tape will record into a folder on the voice recorder.

Once the side of the tape is done push stop to stop recording on the voice recorder. Unplug the mini cable from the voice recorder. Then, and this is what's neat about the WS-311M, take the cover off of the USB plug on the voice recorder and plug it into your computer's USB port. If your computer is like mine, it reads the WS-311 as an auxiliary drive, and when you plug it into the computer a dialog box should open asking you what to do with the device. Click on "Open folder to view files". In one of the folders you'll see a WMA file. This will be your cassette tape recording transferred into a digital format. You can retain it as it is, a WMA file, and play it that way or convert it to MP3 with a program like "Switch".

The sound quality is pretty good once you learn to tweak the setting on the WS-311 and figure out the volume you need to record without distorting the sound.

FYI, I'm not a paid employee of Olympus. I was simply looking for a way to transfer old cassette tapes to my computer without going through 52 steps to do it. The USB port connector is what sold me on the Olympus recorder. I'm now looking into trying this method in recording my record albums. Since the output would be coming through the headphone jack from a stereo receiver and going into the recorder as a direct connect microphone, I'm guessing it'll work as well as it has with the cassette tapes. Regarding the voice recorder thing, you can probably use a fairly decent one by any manufacturer that allows you to tweak the settings within the recorder. Talking with the tech people where I work is what led me to Olympus.

Thanks for the information - looking for something like this...

Any other suggestions rather than a direct link from turntable/cassette to PC??

Cheers.