Transfer stereo audio onto laptop

One option I haven't had, so far, was recording from my stereo/phono onto my laptop. The latptop I chose has HDMI, USB, microUSB, SD card, and combo jack ports. But no sound card inputs. I can use the combo jack as audio input or output, but require a special cable I would have to build myself.


The USB ports will not send analog music data to any app. There needs to be an intervening piece of software, and/or, hardware.

I tried running a USB-RCA(stereo) cable from my amplifier to a USB port on my latop with no success. However, I did try using the EZCap dongle that I use to record VHS tapes from the VHS player, and that worked. The dongle has standard A/V terminations:Audio Right, Audio Left, and Video. I plugged the audio jacks into the Tape Record RCA jacks on the back of my amplifier, tuned into a radio station, then plugged the EZCap into my laptop's USB 3.0 port.

That works, but I had some trouble locating the source of distortion. The signal  was overdriven to the point of clipping. Eventually, I found the USB 2.0 Microphone control volume to be set too high.
I set the volume control lower and now can record anything I can plug ito my system.

One of the benefits is I can record from my turntable and transfer my LPs to computer files. Of cource, I had already done that with a Pentium desktop computer several years ago. Desktop computers have sound card RCA inputs on the back of the computer. The EZCap replaces the desktop sound card not accessible on the laptop.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drive rack, ventilation and wiring.

 My drives have a new rack to hold them. Hot glue and square wood dowels provided the materials with which to build the rack. I used zip ties and a small computer fan attached to the end of the rack to provide cooling air ventilation for the drives. This will increase the lifetime of the drives. Previously the were stacked on top of each other and became noticeably warm during use. The wiring really was bad. Too many cables/wires held together with zip ties. I added a surge protected outlet strip of a newer, more sophisticated design. I rearranged the system wiring to minimize the number of outlet strips and the disarrayed wires. Two strips were screwed to the wall. One was removed. The circular strip was moved from the entertainment center to a work table beside the other two strips and combined with them to supply all devices attached to the system. The strip removed replaced the circular strip in the entertainment system.  Overall, the current setup works better. Both syste...
Read more

Philips Hue lights Updated

 Philips Hue lights are known for the ability to program brightness, saturation, and hue using software. Most people use one or more cellphone apps to control their Hue lights. I've a history in computrer science and electronic technology and engineering, so took this up as a new interest. WiFi control of light bulbs' colors has interested me ever since I read aboout the topic some years ago. There happened to be seven Hue bulbs available from one eBay seller and for a reaosnable fee, approximately $20. A bridge device is used to communicate with the bulbs, so I waited for a good deal on eBay and got one. Philips has evolved a developer community and resources for those who want to explore the possibilities in lamp light control. The user joins the communnity and gets a temporary API key, formerly referred to as a 'username', good for one session. Then a browser or app, can be used to send commands to the bulbs. There are other avenues of communication. Python libraries...
Read more

Jellyfin media server

 The owner of Emby has blocked my using the WebOS access method of using Emby. I discovered the method and posted on the product's forum. That software is no longer my media server and has been removed from my computers. I replaced Emby with Jellyfin. Jellyfin is the evolved Emby open sourced. Emby was originally open source (and free) but was privatized and monetized by the creator. Many considered that move unethical.  The last open source version became the basis for Jellyfin,  easily competitive with Emby and almost, if not equally, well known. I've been using Jellyfin for about a year, perhaps more. The software has issues but is in constant development but is very useful in the current state, version 10.8.5.
Read more