Which cassette tape player - for FLACing?

[LeoSayer]

I've got rather a large number of cassette tapes in my loft, mainly containing recordings of live converts. After 15 years of sitting in the loft I'm now determined to 'digitize' these so that I can listen to them again using modern equipment.

I fired up my old Aiwa tape deck and had a brief scary moment when all I got from it was hiss but playing on an old portable tape player proved the tapes still contain music.

So I need to replace the Aiwa but have no idea what to buy or where to get it from. Clearly I don't need a recording function only playing, but I want to be able to get the best out of the tape so some kind of adjustment (azimuth?) would help. I only need it for a few months after which I'll have no further use for it, so I guess ebay might be the best bet.

My pc has a sound card with a single 'line-in' socket. Will this suffice?

Any advice/experiences would be very helpful.

[sparkyhx]

get an old Nakamichi - they were the best in their day. Cassettes are dead and you can get quality kit for peanuts. the down side is they are rare.

buy it and resell it after

Tandberg and Revox also worth considering.

Edited by sparkyhx on Sunday 18th January 20:26

[otherman]

Line-in is right. It exactly matches the signal from 'tape out' on a standard hifi amp, almost like they knew what we'd use them for. Don't use the mic input though becaust it's mono.
I have to ask why on earth you record flac from a tape though. I'd just record to wav (which is quick to save)then batch convert it all to VB0.