How to record from line input?

[Andrew Farris]

On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 18:28 -0700, Bill Moseley wrote:
> Running  9.04.
> 
> I'm trying to rip a cassette tape.  Sound Recorder has only "Capture"
> available in the "Record from input" select list.  Capture from
> *what*?
> Sound plays through my speakers when playing the tape.  But when I
> record it only records from my QuickCam webcam (usb) device's mic.
[snip]

Something along these lines was actually asked a few days back,
unfortunately I've already cleared it out of my mailbox, so I don't
remember exactly when.

I've accomplished this same thing before (but recording from LP vinyls)
by just plugging a male-male cord into the headphone jack of the record
player, and the mic jack on my computer. This got sound of a reasonable
quality that I burned on a CD for my dad to listen to while he's in the
car.

In the thread a few days back though, somebody suggested reading the
input from the /dev that held the sound info before it got piped to the
sound card to preserve quality... I'm sorry but I don't remember how it
was that they did this. 

I did a quick search of the archives, and came up with a few things that
might be of some interest: