Your vinyl records and 8-track tapes are pining to be played again. And your computer is willing to oblige them.
This is the age of digital music and, with a little bit of finesse, you can convert just about any type of audio - whether it's on CDs, vinyl, cassettes, 8-tracks or even a live performance of your kid playing his violin - to music files on your computer's hard drive.
And, with the right music-editing software such as Tracer's Diamond Cut or Magix's Audio Cleaning Lab, you'll even be able to "re-master" your new recordings and filter out annoying pops, crackles and static.
Just don't expect miracles - a scratched record is still going to sound more or less like a scratched record. But if you've kept your vinyl or cassette collection in reasonably good shape over the years, copying your Beatles albums and Broadway 8-tracks to a computer has some real advantages:
Convenience: With your songs stored on a hard drive, you can play them on your computer with a click of the mouse. Or you can burn the tracks onto an audio CD that you can pop into your home or car stereo. No more stuffing records into album sleeves, and no more rewinding tapes.
Preservation: Every time you play a record, you risk scratching a treasured keepsake (if you've kept it around this long, yes, it's a keepsake). Cassettes are also vulnerable to wear. In fact, every time you play a record or magnetic tape, it degrades. Making digital duplicates not only ensures that you have backups, but also saves the originals.
Cost: It doesn't take much to turn your PC into a home-recording box. You'll need a basic sound card with a line-in jack (found on almost all computers,) an RCA-to-1/8-inch headphone adapter cable ( $2 at Radio Shack) and an encoder program with an option for line-in recording.
MusicMatch Jukebox and RealNetworks' RealJukebox 2 are easy to use and produce good results. Free demo versions of these programs and similar software are available on the World Wide Web or in stores. MusicMatch costs $25 for the deluxe version.
Quality: Re-mastering is easily done with many free programs available on Web sites such as CNET's www.download.com. Depending on the quality of the originals, a proficient piece of software can doctor your recordings so they sound better than before.
