Recording music from Line in jack

[747 jock]

I'm trying to copy some music from a minidisk player, onto a laptop but not having any joy. I'm sure that there's probably a very simple way to do this, but I can't seem to figure it out.

I want to plug the MD player into either the line in jack, or the mic in jack, and copy the music so it can be stored in "my music", and played through windows media player.
Is there any way that I can do this using windows (XP home edition), or do I need to get another piece of software of some sort?
Thanks for any tips and advice.

[ZH875]

Try Audacity a nice free program, it should do what you require.

[BOAC]

Have you tried it? If so what happened? You will probably find that the impedance of the MD output does not match the input impedance, in which case you will need a matching unit similar to that used to record vinyl onto the computer. Check the two values in your documents.

[spannersatcx]

Doesn't a minidisk player come with a connector to hook it upto a pc?

Then just used sonic stage or whatever it's called these days to transfer the music across.

[seacue]

One never matches impedances in ordinary home audio. Even speaker output for XXX-ohm speakers has a much lower source impedance. Low level (line level) outputs are generally under ten-thousand ohms and inputs are greater than one hundred thousand - so they don't load the driving source.

Signal amplitude incompatibility seems more likely. Audio "line level" in home kit is usually in the one-volt range, sometime half that.

[PPRuNeUser0211]

I suspect that if you plug your MD out into the line in on your pc, then run the above linked program it will work just fine!:P

[BOAC]

One never matches impedances in ordinary home audio.

- not my experience trying to put vinyl on CD! I had to acquire a small matching unit which 'did the biz'

[747 jock]

Thanks for all the advice.
I'll give Audacity a go over the next few days.

[vapilot2004]

Line in is the jack you need 747J.

Use headphones on the line-out of the lappy to monitor for gross distortion as you set the levels. Scan for loud passages. Might also want to check specs on your laptop to ensure there is a 2 channel input for recording - some only do mono.

Tutorial for Audacity here.

Soundforge has this link.

Good Luck and Happy Recording!