What Sound card for recording LP's and cassettes to digital

[windspeed]

I want to burn my LP's and cassettes to hard drive and CD in fairly high quality for replaying on a Hi Fi stereo as well as a computer. What external sound card would you recommend for my Toshiba laptop to do this well? Thanks Chris

 

[SciFiMan]

I don't know about an external for that, but I can tell you that unless you already have a highend turntable, LP's in mint condition, and a whole lot of time, you may be disappointed in the quality. The gear to do this may cost more than replacing the music.

We had 50 or so LP's and a box of old favorite cassettes. Also an old, but at the time of purchase high end turntable, and I hooked it up to our pc last winter. Even with current software and a hours work per LP I still had scratchy sound. Nothing I wanted to actually listen to. In the end we decided to replace what we could with CD or MP3 versions and abandon the LPs to Goodwill.

 

[dean7]

Well, for this type of thing you will want a professional card if you want to get any good results. I'm assuming your record player has RCA outputs? That will pretty much limit you to pro cards anyway because most consumer-level cards don't have RCA. Cards from M-Audio and E-MU use some of the nicest DACs around. But, I don't think they use RCA (they use 1/4" jacks instead for Mics). Check out the ESI Juli (also has a good DAC):

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/esi-julia/

 

[dean7]

You may have a good point here .