An all-digital music library would be ideal, but most people have vast libraries of albums, cassettes, and other analog audio sources—not to mention other potential audio sources, such as concert DVD movies—that require analog copying. Wouldn't it be nice to get that content onto your PC?

The catch—and there's always a catch—is that recording analog audio requires that you hand-tune each recording. Cassette and album recordings, for example, generally contain a lot of background noise, such as hiss, so you probably want to fade in and out of each song. Then you need to consider hardware and software concerns: How do you physically connect the analog device to your PC, and which software should you use to edit the audio into acceptable clips?

Most users have sound cards on their PCs, but because the quality of these cards varies from machine to machine, you need to test your card before you commit to using it for recording analog audio. My desktop machine has Voyetra Turtle Beach's Santa Cruz sound card, and I found that the quality of the Line In port was much better than I had expected.

To test the sound-card Line In recording process, I searched for the most horrible-sounding analog recording I could find—a cassette tape of 1980s "power ballads" (and you thought I wouldn't take a bullet for the team), which I played back through a once-decent early-1990s Sony tape deck. To connect the stereo component to the PC, I purchased a $4 Recoton 6' Mini-to-RCA "Y" cable, which converts the RCA-based audio outs on the cassette player into one stereo minijack that fits the Line In port on my sound card. I also grabbed a 6' miniplug extension cable, just in case I couldn't get the cassette player close enough to the computer (also $4).

After dusting off the cassette player and making the physical connection, I had to figure out how to record the sound into the PC. All Windows versions come with a handy little tool called Sound Recorder, which lets you record through your sound card's microphone or Line In ports. Sound Recorder works strictly with the WAV (.wav) format, which is uncompressed (and thus creates large files), and it offers no real editing functionality (that is, you can't fade in or fade out—two crucial capabilities I needed). Thus, Sound Recorder is unsuitable for our work, although it would do in a pinch.

By searching the Internet, I found several tools that supply the features I wanted, and I ended up using E-Soft's $15 Audio Edit 3.3 shareware tool (see Resources below) that's easy to use and full-featured. But regardless of the tool you use, the process is the same. First, ensure that the Line In port is enabled in Windows (because it often isn't). To do so, double-click the speaker icon in your system tray (or, in Windows XP, select Start, Control Panel, Sounds, Speech and Audio Devices, Sound and Audio Devices, Advanced) and clear the Mute check box under Line In if it's selected. I left the volume level at its default, about 75 percent, but you might experiment with this setting based on the volume of the recordings you create.

Next, cue up the audio, which is generally a manual process on albums and cassettes, by pressing Play on the component stereo device, then clicking record in Audio Edit or your tool of choice; the tool will then prompt you to begin the recording. A couple of recommendations: First, before you begin, make sure the audio editor is set up to record from Line In (select File, Setup, Record Input Source in Audio Edit). Also, you should record songs individually, if you can, and leave room at the beginning and end of each song so that you have space for editing. You want a few seconds of lead-in and lead-out time so that you can create the appropriate fades.

After recording the song or selection, stop the analog playback. Then you can begin editing. For my tests, I chose a drecky Bad English power ballad called "When I See You Cry," which features a hissy, quiet piano introduction, making it the perfect candidate for a fade-in (not to mention the clearance bin at Sam Goody, but that's another story). Like most audio editors, Audio Edit presents a visual sound wave display that shows you the highs and lows of the recording you just made. A flat line represents silence. First, edit the beginning and end of each song so that, if possible, you have a second or two of silence. This process won't work with some recordings, such as live concert recordings, but it should be easy with most studio tracks. In Audio Edit, you can clip audio sections by selecting them in the sound-wave display area, just as you'd select text in a word processor. Then, select Edit and Cut. Do this both for the song's introduction and the ending, where appropriate.