binsley

Hi again, Member a440 advised: > In settings for your soundcard (Settings/Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices/Audio) you have to make sure your soundcard is sensing the optical stream for Sound Recording, and then you should be ready to record. Under Settings/Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices/Audio/Sound recording, there's only one device to pick from - something called "C-Media Wave Device"; there's also a tab "Volume" which brings up the usual "Recording Control" mixer, but that has only the usual culprits: Stereo Mix/Microphone/CD Audio/Aux/Line In/Wave - nothing about an optical stream. Does this imply that my soundcard isn't up to the job? It's a Trust SC-5250 5.1 which I bought especially for this since it has optical-in, but I have to admit that I haven't been impressed; its paper manual is useless, the online help refers to utilities which don't look like the ones I got, and Trust's Tech Support people must be far too important to demean themselves by replying to mails from customers... Does anyone have any experience with this piece-of-junk card, or with Trust in general? Note that the optical and co-ax connectors are on a daughtercard, and I wonder whether the D-to-A is done on the daughtercard so that the main card never actually sees any digits at all. I'm piggybacking on this thread since no-one seems to want to talk on my identical one which was started a day earlier - sigh... Anyway, it might be useful for Chris to be aware that it may still depend on how good his own soundcard is. John

Thanks a440 for your replies. Just to clarify though: > With optical out you can record in realtime. I don't care whether I have to do it in realtime; mine is probably a one-off project, or at the most an infrequent task. I assume however that this ALSO means that the recording is analogue. If my assumption is correct - what's the point of the optical connections? Why not just use line-in? If I've understood wrongly, however, and it IS possible to record digitally (albeit in real-time) with an optical cable from a standard MD deck to a soundcard... then how the heck do you do it?? John

Hi, this question is identical to the one I asked yesterday, in the thread below. I'm a little confused therefore that member a440 replied here: > Some MD decks do have optical out, and with those you can record digitally to a PC, assuming you have a soundcard with optical in. - whereas a440 told me that I needed, specifically, an MZ-RH1, not just a deck with optical out and a soundcard with optical in - I already have those. John

Hi, first post, very new to MD. Trying to get real digital input onto my PC from a (standard) disc recorded on a fairly old portable. Splashed out on a new but cheap soundcard (Trust SC-5250) with optical-IN, and a secondhand deck (Sony MDS-JE520) with optical-OUT, but the recording utility which came with the card still seems to re-sample the analogue, even though claiming to accept SPDIF input; certainly the sound quality's no better than just recording from the Stereo Mix using a standard utility such as Nero Wave Editor. It seems to me there should be some way of staying in the digital world to produce a wav file! Do I need to a) Buy a better soundcard Buy a better MD deck c) Give up and just accept the extra D-to-A and A-to-D steps, with consequent degradation? Any help gratefully accepted! Cheers John