Ripping music from cassette tapes & DVD's

[kenisu3000]

Here's another question about recording the music from the series. I don't know how to rip music onto my computer decently, except when it's from a CD format. However, to help myself through my BGM documentation, I've been recording the unreleased-on-CD BGM directly from the DVD's onto cassette tape for me to listen to during work. But I've been trying to record it directly from my tapes onto the computer so I can upload them to my iPod. I'm not getting very good results, though. I pull up the sound recording program... and well... just listen to this buzz-erific piece of crap!.
What I use is the simple concept of taking a stereo cable (not the split two-prong red-and-white, just a plain stereo cable, one-prong both ways), plugging one end into the earphone jack on my cassette player, and the other end into the microphone jack on the back of my CPU.
The crappy quality can't be because of the cassette tape format, because I tried the exact same method with my portable DVD player, and got the same result. How do I rip music from a cassette tape, so that it's the same good quality as what's on the tape? If that's not possible, then how do I do it through DVD? (Though I'd prefer doing it through cassette tape as I don't want to have to go through all the episodes I've already gone through.)
I know this is stuff that by all means I should already know, but bear in mind I have no experience in this area.

[Castor Troy]

You would have to rip the dvd with smartripper or dvd decrypter in file mode where you can have them ripped as vobs. Then you would run the vobs in DGIndex/dvd2avi and extract the sound to ac3 or wav.

That's just the jist of it and I'm sure there are some more detailed tutorials out there.

[kenisu3000]

Would I need a DVD-ROM drive for that (which I don't have)?

[Castor Troy]

Would I need a DVD-ROM drive for that (which I don't have)?

Oh yeah, you do.

They shouldn't really cost a lot.

[kenisu3000]

I don't doubt they're cheap (as EVERYBODY seemed to own one back when DVDs were first becoming popular), but all the same, I have to be as frugal as I can get, since I broke down and bought two DragonBoxes recently, and I still want to have enough money for college.

Any methods for making a decent mp3 recording directly from a cassette tape?

[desirecampbell]

Well there's the fancy route... http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/7a8d/


That'll run you 150 bucks or so.


Or you could just plug your cassete player into your PC's mic jack (you'll need a male-male cable)


Shouldn't be more than five dollars at your local RadioShack.

[kenisu3000]

Or you could just plug your cassete player into your PC's mic jack (you'll need a male-male cable)


Shouldn't be more than five dollars at your local RadioShack.

That's the cable I use, and I am indeed plugging it into my computer's microphone jack, but that's how the crappy recording quality came about. At first I was thinking maybe my sound card is fried, but that couldn't be it since it's the recording device that gives it the problem. I've used my default recording program (plain ol' Windows Sound Recorder), and the one from my GoldWave program (which I've lost respect for). Both produce the same result.
The weird part is, I've recorded my voice through the computer mic before (trying to submit an audio email for the Podcast), and the audio is perfect, no buzzing whatsoever. I guess I could just hold my cassette player up to the microphone, but that's the way I used to do it when I was a reeeeeal little kid and there's always the outside noises interfering.

[desirecampbell]

If there's 'bussing' there could be electric interference. My sound card (heh, it's just the mobo's on-board sound) sucks so I get buzzing on everything.

The best thing to do might actually be just to hold the player up to the microphone