Ion iTTUSB connections and settings

[Waterford Parker]

I have an Ion iTTUSB phono (gift in 2006) so I can record my albums and make music files for my Ipod. I just want to record albums, nothing fancy at all. I haven't used the phono in a number of years and the software on the CD I was given is old and I have a different laptop computer (Dell Latitude E5500). So I downloaded Audacity 2.0.5 and am trying to run it on my laptop, which has Windows 7 Enterprise. I'm having much difficulty. First I haven't seen anything that shows me where or how to hook up the somewhat old audio cables to my laptop. Is it the microphone? If so, then I've figured out a way to physically hook it up, I had the male-female converter cable to line cable which I plugged into the microphone jack. I'm assuming I need this hooked up to hear the music from the phono as I'm recording it. For the line in the phono has a USB, and there are 4 possible USB plug-ins on my laptop. I've tried 2 of them and there is no difference in my lack of success.

When I try to record, there are a couple signigicant problems: 1) No sound comes out of my computer speakers, unless I unhook the USB connection; 2) the audio waves shown on the audio track are very small, it's usually just a fat line. I've gotten it to record and make bigger waves playing with the settings a bit, but it's nothing like I remember it looking and the sound, when I play it back, is full of background noise. Can someone let me know what the problem may be? I'm hoping for a very simple fix because I'm not very techy when it comes to audio devices.

[Robert2]

Have a look at "Connecting your Turntable or Cassette Player to your Computer" on this page http://www.ionaudio.com/usb-turntable-and-cassette-faq