Mi iMic

Well, I didn’t end up buying the PC Tape Deck from ThinkGeek after all (Though it is still tempting). A couple of months ago I did purchase something called an iMic from buy.com. At $35 it is quite the bargain compared to the built in tape deck for your PC.

Like the cassette deck from ThinkGeek, the iMic allows you to import analogue to your PC and reformat the file into any type of sound file. It works on a PC or a Macintosh and has a freeware recording program for the Mac and a shareware trial version of Cool Edit for the PC. The trial version of Cool Edit is nice but I’ll probably end up using Audacity with it on my PC. With Cool Edit 2000 you can “zoom” in on your sine wave and delete clicks and pops you might pick up on LPs and whatnot. Trouble is, with the trial version you are only allowed to use two features at a time when working with your files. It also only allows you to save your work for 30 days. Then no more Cool Edit unless you pay. Audacity allows all this also but has additional functionality for tracking a specific pattern in a sine wave and eliminating it throughout your sample. Audacity is also a freeware program.

The advantage of an external microphone on your PC is that you eliminate much of the EMI associated with recording on a PC. Often if you use just the miniplug on the back of your system, you will pick up electro-magnetic interference from all of the electronics running in your computer. With the iMic this is eliminated because it is a good 12″ to 14″ away from your computer.

Here’s how it works: Basically, you plug in RCAs using the provided adapter and then run it back to your stereo… just like it was a component. You then can record sound from ANY analogue (or digital converted to analogue) device you want.

I’ve imported an old Christmas album, two 12″ singles and the entire LP. Last night I imported a virgin vinyl (never been opened) copy of “Folk of the ’80s (Part III)” by Men Without Hats. I recorded them at 48000 KHz, then boosted the amplification on the album by about a decibel, made master CDs, converted them to 128 bit AAC and now have all of these goodies on my iPod. It truly is amazing.