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How to Play Cassettes in a Car CD Player

To play your cassettes in a car CD player, you must transfer your cassette's music onto a writable CD-R. The method to do this is a convoluted one, but necessarily so since these two musical formats are separated by years of technological innovations. However, it allows you to not only play your favorite cassettes in your car and other CD players, but it also helps ensure your music's longevity by converting it to a more reliable format.

Things You'll Need

  • Tape deck
  • Stereo RCA cable with mini-jack
  • Music recording software
  • Computer
  • CD burning software
  • Blank CD-R (writable)
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Instructions

    • 1

      Plug in the black and white RCA jacks into the corresponding black and white jack sockets in the back of your tape deck. Plug the mini-jack at the other end of your RCA cable into the headphone socket, if using a laptop, or the line-in socket in the back of your desktop computer.

    • 2

      Open your music recording software program by clicking on the icon in your task bar. Set the program up to record a new track. Popular recording software includes Audacity, Cakewalk, Adobe Audition and a variety of others, and each software package will have its own procedures for setting up and recording tracks.

    • 3

      Insert a cassette tape into the tape deck and press "Play." Watch the recording level gauge on your music software program and adjust the volume accordingly, so that it doesn't exceed the maximum record level set by the gauge.

    • 4

      Rewind your cassette to the beginning when the levels are set. Press "Record" on your music recording program and press "Play" on your tape deck. Save the recorded cassette to your computer's desktop.

    • 5

      Open your disc burning program, such as iTunes or Windows Media, by clicking on its icon. Drag the recorded cassette's file into the program. Create a new playlist in the disc burning program by selecting "File" then "New Playlist." Type a name for your new playlist and drag the cassette file into it.

    • 6

      Insert a blank CD-R into your computer's disc drive and click on "Burn" or "Burn Disc." Eject the CD-R when it has finished burning and insert it into your car's CD player. Press "Play."

Recording Music

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