After the ripping and burning article I wrote last month I’ve gotten a lot of questions about converting older sound formats to CD so I’ve decided to put it all here for everyone to enjoy.
Making the Connections
The first thing to do is make the connection between your music equipment, such as a record deck or a tape player, and your computer's sound card. If you are planning to record music from a turntable that isn't part of an all-in-one hi-fi system, then you need to be aware that although turntables generally have RCA outputs at the rear, these can't be plugged directly into your sound card's inputs. Because of the way vinyl is recorded the music needs to be fed through a pre-amp for it to sound normal. If you don’t have an all-in-one system you can simply take advantage of the pre-amp built in to the amplifier of your hi-fi. All you have to do is make a connection from your amplifier's line-out or Aux jack to your sound card's line-in jack.
If you don't have a line-out or Aux jack, you can try using the headphone output instead. However, you'll have to be careful not to turn the volume up too loud or it will overload your sound card and lead to distorted recordings. You’ll have to spend a little time experimenting with low settings until you're happy with the levels.
If you are recording from a tape player then you can make the connections in the same way. The one big difference is that you won't need to worry about pre-amps. Instead, you can just connect the line-out or Aux output on your tape deck to your sound card's line-in jack.
Depending on the types of inputs you have available on your sound card you may need to get some adapters to make the connections. The most common adapter needed for this type of operation is an RCA to Stereo Mini Plug.