Recording from phone to PC - possible?

[Binky]

I do phone interviews and my radio shack phone-to-cassette recorder device is okay but I'd rather record directly to my hard drive. Anyone know an easy way to set this up?

Can it be done through an (inexpensive) modem of some kind?

[Dunx]

How does your current device get the sound signal from the phone to record onto tape? Pardon my ignorance - I haven't come across one of these phone recorders before. If you could reproduce that technique to output to a standard microphone jack then I should think you'd be able to feed that into the PC.

If that's not feasible (I'm guessing that the recorder probably works by induction rather than recording the sound directly) then I would have thought you could use a phone which has a plug for a hands free kit and split the signal out on its way to the headset.

Hmm... interesting project. But no, I don't know an easy way.

An aside though: is recording phone calls without notice legal where you live? Certainly in Britain you either have to notify people up front or put a little regular beep in the call to inform them that they are being recorded.

[MinorMan]

I was all set to steer you to some articles on telephone hybrids and other techinical aspects of my trade, when I happened upon this lovely solution to your problem.

http://www.jkaudio.com/html/voice-path.htm

Hope this helps,

John

[frankc]

[Your profile link is to Aota, not your own website!]

What 'zaktly is "your trade"?

Frank
==curious people want to know==

[MinorMan]

What 'zaktly is "your trade"?

audio engineer, web design, musician - in varying orders. !`

[Binky]

http://www.jkaudio.com/html/voice-path.htm

Thanks for the pointer but this item, great as it seems, costs way more than I can spend on this problem.

I was hoping that one of those phone/voice modems, a cheap one, might do the trick. Also, I can take apart an old phone and run the audio-out part to the soundcard input. I think that should work.

I just thought there'd be a simpler solution.

[MinorMan]

The problem lies in the impedance and level mismatch between a phone and other audio gear, not to mention the DC voltage present on a phone line. So, if you are considering tearing apart that old phone, I highly recommend you have a look at this Web page,

http://www.internews.ru/books/radiohandbook/18.html

which will show you how to prepare the line to keep it from damaging your sound card, or worse.