First I am a novice.

Hi, Im wanting to copy some old tapes to a cd but im not sure how, can anyone tell me where I can get a free Audio Cleaning Lab from, I assume this will do the job for me. I have got a lot of back ground noise on my cassettes this might be because they are old. Many thanks for your time Ann

Hi ankei818. Welcome to AnswerPool.

If you copy your cassettes to a CD, you will still have background noise. You will just copy the problem. You can purchase a cassette cleaner for about $5.00 at any Office Supply or Radio Shack. This still isn't going to improve the quality that much. If you really want to copy them to a CD, you can buy an audio cable to headphone converter and plug it into your stereo aux. output. You can plug the headphone end to your microphone jack on your computer. Download any free sound recording program ( like this one) and just record the cassette to your computer. Save the song file as a .wav file and then burn to a CD. I personally think you would be better off just buying the CD's you really like.

Hi Clarebear,
Thanks for the tip we will have ago doing that.
I am only doing this because they are family recordings of about 30yrs ago.
Many thanks for your time Ann

I found a great do it yourself site.

This may help

Hi Clarebear,
Thankyou, the site is just what we needed, I think we know what we are doing now, many thanks for your time and for been so helpful.
Regards Ann

You're welcome.

Family recordings are priceless. I don't think you should mess with cleaning the cassettes. (Most people clean the stereo instead) You don't want to take the chance of ruining something that you can't replace.