You now need to tell your computer to accept input from the Line In socket. To do this, load the mixer application by double clicking on the speaker at the bottom right of your desktop.

From the 'Options' menu, choose 'Properties'.

You now need to select the option to adjust settings for Recording, as shown in this picture.

Now ensure there is a tick next to the word Select for the Line In, as shown in the picture. You will also need to make sure you have the input volume slider somewhere between half way and full volume. The position of the slider will depend on the volume of the disc you are recording and the amplification on your sound card. You can also ensure that you get as little background noise as possible by clearing ticks from other inputs such as CD Audio and Microphone. Ensuring the Microphone input is not selected is the most important, as this can generate a very large amount of hiss which is very noticable in the end recording.

You should now find that any recording software you run will be able to record the music you play on your Minidisc. The software you use will probably vary considerably, and will probably be using software that varies from the software I usually use. In the examples below, I have used Sound Forge 4.5 which is very good for manipulating sound. The main requirements for recording sound and ensuring a good quality recording, are that you should be able to see the level at which the recording will be made. Sound Recorder does not offer this facility, and is therefor almost useless for quality recording. WaveStudio, which comes with Sound Blaster cards, is adequate for the job as it provides a basic means of monitoring the sound volume before you start recording. The reason as to why this is important will become clear in a moment.

By finding a loud passage in the music you wish to record, you can set the record levels so that the music will be loud enough to be free of background noise, yet not too loud so that it ends up distorting. Ideally, the peak of the music should hit somwehere between -6 and -3 on the scale (shown in the picture) so that any slightly louder passages will not cause distortion or clipping (a cracking sound heard on playback). If the levels are too high, use the mixer program to reduve the volume of the Line In input. If the volume is to quiet, then slide the Line In volume up a bit more.

You can now stop playback and line the Minidisc up with the point at which you wish to start recording. The best way to do this, is to put the unit in Pause mode at the start of the track. When it is ready, click 'Record' in your sound recording sofware, and press start on your Minidisc. You can now sit back and wait for the end of the music. When you reach the end of the music, click 'Stop' in your sound recording software, and stop the Minidisc. You should now save your recorded file somewhere where it can easily be found. I suggest saving it in the 'My Documents' folder. You should really now listen to the file you have recorded to make sure it has been recorded correctly. If you hear cracking sounds in the playback, or it is distorted, you probably had the record levels too high, in which case you need to turn them down a bit and record the file again. Don't forget to delete the old file first, otherwise you may find you run out of space on the hard disc. Typically, a recording will take about 10Mb per minute, so a 5 minute song will need 50Mb free on your hard disc. Once you have recorded your music and you are happy with the result, you are ready to turn the WAV file you have recorded into an MP3.

There is a wide range of software for turning WAV into MP3, and the software you choose can have a big impact on the sound. Although the program I have chosen to use is really designed to grab music from a CD to make MP3s with, it has one of the best MP3 encoders available, and also has the ability to encode WAV files as MP3, whic is what we are about to do. You can get a shareware version of this program from many sites on the internet, or direct from the Xing Technology Web Site.

In the program, you should click the Settings button, as shown in the picture.

At the top of the window that opens you will see the option to alter where encoded files are saved to. On my system I have a drive (G:) that is just used for MP3 files. Most people will want to set this to somewhere such as 'My Documents'. The most important thing is to set it to somewhere obvious so that you will be able to find the MP3s easily. Once you have chosen your location, click OK at the bottom of the window.

In the program, you should click the MP3 button, as shown in the picture.

When you click the MP3 button, the following window will appear. Check that the options in your window match those in this one. Note that the blue box towards the bottom of the window has 128kbit/s selected. This value may be changed depending on what you want to do with the file. For listening on the computer at home, or via a laptop, I recommend at least 192kbit/s. I usually use 256kbit/s for my MP3 files. Using such high rates has a big disadvantage for sending these files over the internet though, and that disadvantage is that the higher the rate you choose for encoding, the bigger the file will be. Internet files are usually either 128kbit/s or 160kbit/s because this offers a reasonable trade-off between quality and size. Although you will get some squelching or distorted sounds with instruments such as ride cymbals or wind instruments at high pitch such as flutes or recorders, most music will encode very well at this low rate. Now on with the show... click the button marked 'Browse...' as shown by the hand in the picture. The usual open file dialogue box will appear, and you should find the file you just saved and open it.

A window like the one shown in the picture will appear and your file is now being encoded into an MP3 file. Unfortunately, the downside of this program, is that it does not offer you a location to save the MP3 in when you choose the file. This is why we had to go into the settings dialogue and alter options. When the program has finished encoding, the box will disappear, and your MP3 file will be ready for use.