Copying from vinyl to mp3

Hi Katie.

You should make sure that your source music is in "preamp" level (not a speaker output which is too strong!), usually your music amp will have a "line-level" output, which is perfect. I suppose you can use the headphone-jack output of a portable player, as long as you don't set the volume too high.

If you're using a standard amplifier or (say) a boom box, it should output into two, standard, left-and-right RCA cables. (red and white) You have to terminate these 2 rca cables into a mini-jack (adapters are available) which plugs directly into the 'line input' jack on your computer.

It sounds to me like your Roxio Audio Central software - which I am, unfortunately not familiar with - is set up correctly, but you are only recording silence.

You must OPEN the "Line Input" button within your operating system software. (Windows) If that particular channel is closed, you won't get any sound regardless of the recording software you use. It is also wise to turn the microphone ('mic') button off, to avoid unnecessary hiss/noise. If you are using Windows, you should be able to just click on the little speaker icon in your lower taskbar to open or close these various inputs.

Confused yet?

The most important thing, is to ensure that you can *hear* the incoming music, as played back through your computer! (sound card). It doesn't matter if you can hear your source music player *directly*, you MUST be able to hear the music playing [bold]through-your-computer.[/bold] Plug a pair of headphones into your computer's speaker out jack. If you cannot hear any sound, you have not opened up the proper line-input channel. (click the speaker-icon, and check-off the 'line-input' box).

Does your roxio software have any kind of input-level metering system? (usually these are left and right bargraphs, with a slider control for each channel). You must adjust the level of the incoming music *most* carefully, because if the level is set too high, the sound will be very harsh and distorted.

I use the free program EAC (exact audio copy), which you should be able to find here in the download section, to record all my analog sources (tape, vinyl records, fm radio, etc.), and it works like a charm. I always save the music as WAVE files (*.wav). I can convert them later on to anything I want. (Like .mp3, say).

It's a lot of work, I know, if you haven't done it before, but after I used EAC for a while, it became a piece-of-cake. I just click on the "Record WAV" function. The resulting wave files sound *superb*.

Good Luck!