Recording Sound to a P.C.

AthAnRi

I've recently purchased a car and the car has an MP3 player. I am currently in the process of converting the tracks on my cds into MP3 format.

the problem i have is that I have a load of great songs on Minidiscs also. Does anyone know a way to record these onto a pc using the sound recorder or a way to convert them into mp3's. i know that you can only take songs from a minidisc that was created from a particular computer but surely there is some way to record the tracks directly onto the pc and then convert them at a later stage?

Please help me some one? Anyone

dod

I got some advice from Acous on doing something similar here. To be honest, I haven't got around to actually doing it yet, so I can't fill you in on my practical experience doing it.

Let us know how you get on.

thesteve

you'll need to play the minidisc into the PC and record it using software...

the cheapest thing to do would be to play it into the line in or microphone port and record it using some software. You will then probably have to cut up the whole minidisc into seperate files or tracks

Nero has a wave editor installed with it that's pretty easy to use, I am not an expert on audio software but I have done this successfully using this simple method

AthAnRi

I'll probably look into the USB Sound Card. It seems like the way to go. How can I find out if my USB ports are USB 2.0 or not?

thetourist

i've done this a good bit with audio cassettes the ideal way to do it is this

use the program polderbits sound recorder ( available at download.com -- free triall -- $30 worth every penny ) - also use for vinyl and cassette

http://download.com.com/3000-2169-10213923.html

connect your minidisk to the line in jack on the soundcard -- usually the one on the pc is fine as long as you set the controls properly - idealy use a digital cable ( optical or sp/dif) - but a regular 3.5 in jack to jack would work fine ( or whatever connections on your minidisk player ) -- you may have to go to peats or somewhere to get the correct cable -- you shouldnt use the headphones output on the minidisk unless you dont have a line out as the headphones out is amplified and may overdrive the input on the soundcard resulting in distortion -- if you use line out then set the output vol if you have one to full -- if it's a headphone out you'll have to set it by ear to as loud as you can without getting distortion -- then pull it back a bit for headroom - better off altogether getting a loan of a propper MD player for a while

next you want to set your soundcard recording level to full ( normally this is the best way anyway unless you are getting distortion ) --

rule of thumb - levels too low = hiss ; too high = distortion


make sure that you have selected to reocord only the input that you connected the MD to -- not the desktop mike or anything else - turn all the others off as you dont even want to record background noise

now use the sound recorder program to record the album from the minidisk player

the reason you use polderbits is that it will split the songs up for you and gets it right all the time except for the unavoidable gaps in songs and songs running into one another - so with usually just one or two clicks you'll have the album in seperate tracks ( lots of different options - worth studying the help section and options section for a while )

at this point you could just name the tracks and save as mp3 or wav etc but ( and i use wavelab for this ) if you can get your hands on a program that will "normalise" the tracks for you ( pretty simple process ) then your music will not sound deficient beside a regular radio track etc -- it makes them all as loud as possible ( if not you will prob notice a small drop in vol and a bit of extra hiss ) - if you cant do this then pay a lot of attention to recording levels.

sound recorder will save the songs in mp3 if you want ( you may not be able to normalise them afterward though)

if you want a dedicated wav - mp3 converter then there's loads on download.com

hint -- if you want to get the album into the mediaplayer library then the simplest way is to burn the tracks onto a cd and then get MP to find the cd info on the net afterwards.

if you want to find out if you're USB 2 enabled then i think you can get a bit of info by clicking - start - >control pannels -> system --> hardware -> device manager -> "universal serial bus controlers" and reading anything you can there --- if you have drivers for 2.0 it's prob 2.0 enabled
not sure if 2.0 is of any real benefit to sound cards ( unless they are multichannel )
actually come to think of it unless you are on a laptop' i'd go with pci anyday over usb - not very hard to fit !!

what's really important is bitrate --- 16bit is min -- 24bit better - no need to go higher

also sampling rate --- dont use less than 44.1 - i wouldnt bother with any more than 48 either

hope this helps -- good luck

AthAnRi

BobMurphy you are the man. That seems to be working a treat. Thanks for the help.