Hi Sedayne

I can balance it out with the SW I'm using - signal quality is not good though - as you say, probably a S/N issue.

Ideally, I don't want to have to invest in a new cassette player - for the amount and quality of cassettes that I want to burn to CD, it's probably not worth it.

I did look into buying a half way decent one a few weeks ago, and the cost was going to be in the £200 bracket. Unfortunately, cassette (along with vinyl) seems to be a dying medium (just as CD's will probably die), so my guess is geting the hardware to play them is goiing to become increasingly difficult / expensive with the passage of time - hope you will still be able to get in 20 years time for your backups!