Please help a Bimble so you can have a compilation of Birmingham post-punk bands from 1981

I'm panicking. I had a Dell laptop. I had a soundcard for it (Soundblaster). The soundcard broke, so I bought a new one, but the only soundcards they had at the store for laptops was a USB thing. So I brought it home. I plugged it in. But I can't hear my turntable from it when I plug the turntable in. And I'm freaking out. Please help me. I need to rip this LP of Birmingham post-punk bands and I'm not being allowed.

What do I do? I have to get another soundcard, right? Where do I get one? What am I going to do? Help.

Without knowing your equipment, it's hard to say what's up, or down. But it seems that your USB device lacks a phono section to amplify the signal from the cartridge to listenable levels. (A phono section also does some eq-ing of the RIAA curves to get the right sound, too.)

If you can't get the card you were using, you might try looking at an external device like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Phono-Plus-USB-Preamp/dp/B000BBGCCI

Seems to have a bunch of options for getting sound in (including a phono section), as well as sound out to monitors or a stereo system.

Turntable -> amp -> computer with your current setup

A notch better is the newer version:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000OYJSAA/ref=s9_k2a_c2_t1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0KE8K3CQT7Z2T153QXJQ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=463383371&pf_rd_i=507846

And then there's always higher end stuff:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ED13YE/ref=s9_k2a_c2_t3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0KE8K3CQT7Z2T153QXJQ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=463383371&pf_rd_i=507846

what Boards of Canada said; I just plug the laptop into the "tape 2 out" or whatever in back and it should work fine, i think.

c'mon Michael, anything less than:

http://www.amazon.com/Apogee-AD-16X-16-Channel-Converter/dp/B000RRH06I/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1233552944&sr=1-5

is garbage and not worthy of an mp3 blog.

And what else was there besides the Nightingales?

LOL $3,100 LOL

Alright, well I ordered the same sound card I had through Amazon now. It wasn't cheap, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do sometimes.

though I admittedly aspire to an Apogee converter one of these days, I don't think that Apogee piece has a phono section. And just think how many goth punk 12"s Bimble could get for $3100.

I've got a great unit from MH Labs (a ULN-2) for A/D and D/A conversion. I'd recommend it, but the new version is more than three times the price I paid three years ago. And most of the updates are done as software downloads, not as hardware changes, so I've no idea what gives.