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Setting Up Your Hardware
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If you have an antique, Edison,
wire drum recording, or any
other non-electrical device you
will have to record it through a
microphone.
Old records (even the very
old 16 inch acetate or 12 inch
cellulose disks) recorded at any
speed can be played back through
a modern turntable and
digitized. The recorded speed,
even if it sounds like
chipmunks, can be slowed down
without any loss of sound
quality.
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Your input device can be a microphone or anything
that plays through speakers. However if your input
device (tape player, etc.) has an output port, even if
only for earphones, it makes things much easier.
Otherwise you'll have to connect wires to the speaker
connections.
The physical connection between your input device and
your computer is made with a cable that plugs into your
sound card. Most modern sound cards will have at least
three mini-stereo input/output ports marked Speaker,
Microphone and Auxiliary. (Sometimes Line In instead or
as well as auxiliary.) You can connect the output of
your input device to the auxiliary, microphone or line
in port but you may want to try to see which gives you
the best results. In many cases they're the same but on
high quality cards the auxiliary and/or line-in port is
buffered for amplified sound.
Unfortunately, output jacks on sound equipment can be
anything from a 1/4" microphone plug, to RCA jacks while
your sound card will probably have mini stereo inputs.
Fear not however. You can easily buy or make cables to
mate one device to the other. You can also extend cables
with shielded, twisted pair telephone cord. Just be sure
you match the pairs on both ends. Tape your connections
then wrap each wire individually with foil and tape it
again. Your spinning hard drive will create a scream on
your recording if your cable isn't well shielded.
If your input source is an old turntable with a
crystal cartridge you'll need to amplify the output
before inputting it into the computer. The more modern,
magnetic cartridges produce enough amplitude to go
directly from the phone jack to your PC.
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