What is the best way to connect a stereo to a PC to record music on old media (vinyl, tape) to MP3's and CD's.

Question

I have LOTs of vinyl (and some tapes) which I would like to listen to on an MP3 player. When I say I want the optimum way, my equipment is a 2.8Ghz P4 1.5GHz, with a Sharp CD-BP series stereo. Not an audiophiles choice of equipment, but of a standard that meets my needs happily.

There are ouputs for headphones. There are the main spkrs plus the option of a rear pair (but no bass). This unit is the dedicated input source for the PC (record deck via Aux input). This is the dedicated source that would feed into the PC which would convert between media (this is legal). I would in fact burn CDs and MP3's.

What is the best way to connect them? I could use the stereo record input via Line-In on the sound card. Or I could connect to the motherboard Line-in inputs. My worry is that if I use th speaker as th driver source, one mistake once will blow the front end into the orbit of Mars.

I could use the headphone output.

Answer 1

I'd suggest sour ebay and buy yourself a cheap old separate set up then you can use the aux output.  you can use the headphone output but it aint as good.  Whatever you do, resist using "clean up" options on software as it'll improve the sound on your pc but when you play it back elsewhere itll be rubbish.

Answer 2

For God's Sake, ONLY use the line outs, NOT speaker outputs.

Tape ins and outs are the way to go. Get a device like Turtle Beaches SRM, which is a USB sound card on a stick, which will take the output from the tape outs or aux outs, and input it into the computer with out the risk of blowing the sound or mother board on your computer. It also acts as an output to drive the aux ins so you can play it back on the boom box.

You can also get a Creative 5.1 sound card to install into the computer for less than $30.00, and once again it may save your mother board from being fried (how much is that worth?)