Poor audio quality after transfer

[Bleb]

>>are you positive the levels were not too high when you recorded?

I thought so, but I'm glad you pushed me to look again. I'm beginning to suspect this *was* the problem -- or at least part of it. But now that I look more carefully at recording levels, I can't figure out what's pushing them so high. On Realtek Audio Input, I slid the Recording volume down almost to the very bottom. Same with the input level meter in Audacity: near zero. The levels now aren't crashing but they're still damn high. Why? I don't see any line output volume control on my cassette deck. Is there another control I'm missing?