On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 02:21:21 +0000 (UTC)
Martin Gregorie wrote:

On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:22:51 +0000, Davey wrote:


snip


Alternatively, you might want to look at using an Ion U-Record, just
under 30 squids from Amazon. Its a USB stereo ADC, accepts line-in or
MC pickup levels and is powered off the USB connection. Works well
with Audacity. RCA connectors on the analogue side. I got mine
because it was cheap to see if this was a good way to digitise some
tapes and vinyl and have kept it because I can't see any reason the
replace it with a more expensive device.

Caveat: mine was working well in March last year with whatever the
semi- current Fedora was (probably F15) and Audacity (probably 1.38).
When I tried it a day or two ago (F17, Audacity 2.0.2) no joy: looks
like there's a problem with either the OS or Audacity and the USB
codec. This might be specific to the U-record but it could equally
apply to all external USB sound cards. I bugged it against Fedora but
no resolution as yet.

However, I reckon its hard to go wrong at that price, especially as
it uses a decent Burr-Brown ADC.



I had seen adverts. for Ion stuff, but was wary due to many bad reports
of their slide and negative copying devices; I just made my own, from
a couple of cardboard boxes and Sellotape, and have
successfully digitised hundreds of slides for a History Society.
In my case, I already had a working setup, with a proper sound card
and Audacity in an old Dell desktop PC, but the PC was moved to the
other end of the house, for use with Zoneminder and CCTV. As my need of
this recording setup is now rare, I think I do not need to buy more
stuff, where there is little space for it anyway, for a limited use, but
rather I will take the cassette deck down to the PC to do the job, and
just leave it there, under the PC. But I should one day re-load
Audacity, as it got hosed when I did a full new Ubuntu installation.
But I thank you for your thoughts, it is good to hear that the Ion
device does work.
Another thought:
I have two different TV- PC USB devices. I wonder if one of them would
do the same job, just using the stereo sound inputs? Even if I had to
provide a dummy TV signal for it to lock on to while acting as a TV
device, I could then possibly take the recorded sound track, although I
would need to work out what to do to enable this, and then to do it.
But is it viable? Maybe it would just work with Audacity as it is.
--
Davey.