I have a bunch of old cassette tapes that I would like to convert to MP3s. Can someone please let me know the easiest way to go about doing this? What program would work the best? I want to transfer clear audio, but maintain 100% quality is not absolutely necessary. What I'm transferring is sort of like a book on tape, so as long as the audio is clear that is good enough. Any help is appreciated!

Audacity is good free software for recording. Just connect a casette deck's output to the 'line in' on your soundcard and run Audacity.

I've used 'Groove Mechanic' which was designed for LP to HD transfer, however, there is a De-essing feature, where you play a blank section of your tape and it uses it as a reference to record the rest. I've used it to off load some of my old indie cassettes that will never be put on CD of local bands.

odds are what i do aint the best choice but it works and odds are u already have the software needed... i use use nero's wav editor and connect my tape player to the headphones jack and then into the line-in on the pc.

doing this will require a little trail and error to get the sound just right, so the sound is loud enough output to where it's good but not so high that it distorts. (basically gotta play around with the tape players volume output and the pc's input volume etc)

this usually has decent audio quality... obviously it aint perfect but it's solid.

just a suggestion even though im sure it aint the best one it's not hard to use and odds are you probably already have this program installed if your using a fairly recent version of Nero Burning ROM.

basically doing it this way i record to wav files and then take those wav files and then convert them into whatever bit rate mp3 u want

A nice little program for ripping both LPs and cassettes is RIP Vinyl, worked great with XP, have not tried it with Vista yet.

http://www.ripvinyl.com/