[DJ Frisat]

I see that there have been a lot of negative comments about recording through sound cards. My own experience is quite different, and I don't have exceptionally elaborate equipment -- a Crystal Sound integrated sound system on an HP motherboard, and a Sound Blaster Live card in my other computer. Either one of these is more than capable of producing a wav file indistinguishable from the original - especially when the original is an old audio tape. And with audio cleanup/EQ tools, they can sound even better!

One thing perhaps being overlooked is the sampling rate during recording. The de facto standard for "hi-fi" quality stereo and subsequent transfer to standard CD audio format is 16-bit, 44.1Khz.

If one side of a tape is recorded as a single wav file, it will need to be separated into individual files if you wish to have locatable "tracks" on the final CD. You need a wav editing program for this. I use Cool Edit 2000, a wonderful tool well worth the $69 price. Simply select the portion of the wav that you would like to be a CD track, and write it to a file. Then select the next portion of the wav, write it to a file, etc.

If you're using Adaptec/Roxio's EZ CD Creator to burn your CDs, select "Disc at Once" mode to eliminate the 2-second gap between tracks. The result will be a a CD which plays continuously as if it were one big wav, or will allow you to jump to a track, if you so desire.

[DJ Frisat]

Oh --- and, when recording, take care not to have the level so high as to introduce distortion. You're better off reducing the record level a bit, and then using the "Normalize" function of your wave editor to boost the amplitude to the maximum level without causing distortion...