h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My record buying days started a few years before CDs came to market, so I spent some fun-filled hours recently copying a large number of albums to CD. I have no experience of PCs, being an Apple Macintosh user, and this contribution is for the benefit of other Mac users:

1. All the software required is installed on the Mac as standard. It won't do clever stuff like splitting the recording into tracks, so you will have to do that yourself. Links to step by step 'how to' guides for recording from vinyl, MiniDisk and cassette for Mac and PC are available at [Unsuitable link removed by Moderator]

2. This approach, although cheap, won't give you the best results if your vinyl is not in mint condition. Roxio's Toast application comes with software to clean up noise and scratches, but beware, I have read that it can interfere with the standard Apple iTunes application, which is what I use to compile and burn all my CDs, so I have avoided it. Luckily my vinyl had all been played just once - to get it onto cassette....

3. Good connections and the right audio levels are important if you want the best results. I bought an audio to USB converter, called an iMic, which makes it very easy - see [Unsuitable link removed by Moderator] .If you try and connect the line out from your amp to the sound input on your Mac you will find that although the socket takes a standard 3.5mm stereo plug, the internal connections aren't quite the same size and I found that I got a lot of hum and noise as well as an unreliable connection. The iMic fixed this and, being on a Mac, it was completely plug and play.

I see that the links I provided to the Griffin website have been removed as unsuitable. I have read the house rules and I can see why this happened in the case of the page about the iMic product itself - sorry about that.

However, in the case of the links to the 'how to' guides, these pages seem to me to meet the guidelines, although in the light of this posting from Jimster in F47997?thread=195292 I suppose this is open to interpretation:

"We allow links to commercial sites only if it's not directly linking into the shop area of the site itself. If it links to an information page run from a commercial site but with no evidence of direct commerce present on the page, that would probably be approved (as long as the content is appropriate)."

Can I try again with a link to the 'how to' page for Mac OS9, which is not in what Jimster calls 'the shop area' of the site? http://www.griffintechnology.com/support/imic/IMIC-023.html Failing that, is it permissable to say that a Google search on "iMic griffin" will bring up the relevant site at the top of the list of results?

I have recently fitted a new Rega Super Elys cartridge to my Linn / Ittok record deck and have encountered a problem when recording vinyl through Toast onto my Apple Mac G3 series laptop. The problem being that I now get an input level that is far to high and cannot be adjusted down any further than the maximum lowest point on the slide control.
I had been using a Grado Black cartdridge up till recently with no problems.
Any help would be appreciated.