pol doc

Am demonstrating my noobiness now, lol. I cant figure out how to post a pic in here. I dont have any webspace to set it up as a link. How do I do it?

Well i have tried disabling the monitor. As far as i can see both musicmatch and audacity offer only the same old options as sources (CD, Line, Mic, Aux, Video and stereo mixer) No sign of a SPDIF in either. I am new to Audacity so i could be overlooking something there, if any experienced Audacity users tell me i'm wrong I'd be delighted! The only prog i've tried where SPDIF is an option is Creative's Media source oranizer but it tells me the feature is not available for my selected input device when i try to use it. This is starting to sound like some form of protection now, isn't it? The minidisks are backups of CDs I had to leave behind when i moved overseas because they were too heavy to bring with. Now im moving again and i would like to be able to ditch all those old minidisks too and just take a large hard drive mp3 player. So they are first generation copies from cds and therefore will have copy protection inbuilt. Btw KrazyIvan it is onboard it came as part of a barebones unit. the motherboard is nvidea nforce4 the barebones is a shuttle sn25p. for full specs i included a link to shuttle page in my starter thread. I cant see anything applicable to the soundcard in the bios. I guess i should probably try going thru the hell of talking to a customer support guy who doesnt know what a minidisk is (uh is that just like a small disk?) about computer parts that i dont know enough about. Am I a pessimist or what? I *REALLY* think its lookin like Plan B - get a different sound card. Can any one recommend me to one that should do the trick please?

Thanks for that one Guyj but i have rebooted several times trying to get it to work and installing the different recording progs, unfortunately not making any difference. I really think its lookin like Plan B - get a different sound card. Can any one recommend me to one that should do the trick please?

Btw, not entirely sure if you understood me correctly above. Its only the mute box that is greyed out. The actual slider seems to be active and fine.

I have already tried updating the drivers through control panel\system\hardware\device manager. It says mine are the most up to date. I uninstalled and reinstalled the VIA Vinyl Control Panel. No difference. I think we might be stuck. Considering Plan B - do you think I could fix this by going out tomorrow and buying a different soundcard? If I can be pretty sure of that then i'd be willing to do it. Its worth the money to get out of this frustrating situation. If thats the case could someone please recommend a soundcard? Remember, its a PCI-E slot, btw. Thanks

Thanks for your quick reply but unfortunately its not that. Although that has reminded me of another piece of info i can give you that may help. In that controler (ie the windows one) the mute box on the PCM SPDIF is unchecked *and* greyed out. All the other check boxes are available for checking/unchecking but this one. Dunno if thats meaningful but I thought it might indicate that the windows audio controler doesnt consider that source usable at all. Also in that controller under 'Properties\Adjust volume for\recording' SPDIF doesnt appear at all (its just the usual suspects - CD, line, mic and stereo mix). Again not too sure how relevant that is, just trying to tell you everything that could help spark an idea.

I realise that recording music from minidisk into a computer has already been extensively posted on and I hope this is not a repition of advise already given. I have read many of those posts but have not yet found an answer to my problem. I have taken the advise of many of the experts posting in these forums and bought a minidisk deck with an optical output (getting hold of one was a herculean task in itself! Lol). I have a S/PDIF-in on my computer. The computer is a Shuttle SN25P the integrated soundcard that I am trying to use is listed as VIA Envy24PT. Using the VIA Vinyl Audio Control Panel I can select digital in and am able to hear the minidisk playing through the optical line. This is however accompanied by a warning message which reads "The speaker output is disabled when in digital-in mode, and you must select S/PDIF input source!" With only the option for 'ok'. At first when i did this there was still no sound but the levels showed music was playing. Under the 'digital' tab in the VIA Vinyl Audio control panel there are several options for 'S/PDIF monitor'. When 'Loop back S/PDIF to front speakers' is selected I can hear the music through the computer speakers. Next i tried to record this sound. I started attempting to use Musicmatch which was recommended for this task on one or another minidisk forum. Under Record Source I selected System Mixer, assuming that this was where the sound was coming from and since none of the other sources applied (the options are CD drive, Mic in or Line in). Musicmatch made a recording but when played back it was just silence. Assuming that i needed a program supporting the 'use digital-in as source' option i began downloading and trying different sound recording programs. This forum suggests Audacity, but that did not work apparantly for the same reasons as musicmatch, I also think Dart CD recorder didnt work for the same reason. I tried WinMD but my minidisk deck with the optical out is not a NetMD so that wouldnt work. Creative's media source organizer has the S/PDIF source option but says 'This feature is not available for your selected audio device' when i try to use it. Other input sources are as above, not getting any sound. Phew! Sorry its a long one, just trying to be thorough. I am at a loss. I have no idea how to procceed. I tried looking on the VIA website but could find no information or instructions there. I extensively searched their forums but it seems no one else has tried to do anything like this with this equipment. This got me wondering, am i just using the wrong equipment? Should i look at buying another soundcard for my computer and if so, which one? (I am willing to spend some money here but i am on a budget. Expansion slots are listed as 1x PCI-Express 16X and 1x PCI-Express 1X on the shuttle website. I think my graphics card is in the 16x slot, if that matters) I am so frustrated i consdered buying a seperate rackmounted CD burner, burning the MDs to CDs then uploading those through CD-Rom drive into computer, but i'm not even certain that this expensive, time consuming method would definately work. Arg! LOL as you can see i am at the end of my tether here. Please help if you can. All and any suggestions are very welcom and highly appreciated.