Correct PC Microphone hookup to Phone?

[binar]

Fellow Forum Members,
My work involves getting a lot of technical information over the phone by speaking to engineers and they don't care if I record them as long as it helps me out. The link below shows the phone I'm using:

http://www.uniden.com/products/productdetail.cfm?product=CEZAI998&filter=Adjustable

The problem I need to overcome relates to archiving my phone conversations as MP3 files in my computer. Therefore, I purchased this phone recording control unit from radioshack to grab the audio from the phone and pass it over to my computer via the provided 1/8" audio jack:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2104040


When I connect this Radioshack device to the microphone port in my computer and try recording using Audacity, I get a very strong interference noise that makes recording the sound from the phone worthless.

My question to any audio expert out there, What is the proper hardware needed to hookup a phone to a computer microphone port so that one could record phone conversations without any interference effecting the audio quality? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[stevieb]

Way back in the day, when Windows 3.1, 95, and some later OS's included a fax applet and most on-line access was done with a dial-up modem, it was easy to use your computer as a phone, and a decent application would record your conversations. (The Sound Recorder applet was not good for that- way too short of a maximum recording time.) Now, I dunno...

 

[dgatwood]

The way I hook up a phone is to take a cordless phone on the same line and get a cable with a stereo mini plug or stereo submini plug (depending on the phone) and plug it into the headset jack on the cordless phone. IIRC, tip/left goes to the computer's input, ring/right goes to the computer's output, though that may not be consistent.

If you do it that way, you don't need any sort of sophisticated optocoupler off the phone lines or anything because the cordless phone takes care of all that for you.

 

[binar]

Thanks to all for their post. I am going to look into cordless phones and try out your idea dgatwood. Thanks.

 

[Weasel9992]

...or you could go with Skype and buy a phone recording plugin for $15. If you do that then all of your conversations are saved as Mp3's automatically.

Frank

 

[binar]

Fellow Forum Members,
I finally got it to work nicely. Even better the solution turned out to be not too bad on the wallet. I spent $30 on a better quality phone control unit which hooks up to the wall phone jack, unlike the $20 model which connected to the phone handset and caused all kinds of interference noise. The link below shows the unit that I found out works for me:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2123175

All I do is connect the 1/8" audio jack to my computer Microphone jack and then launch Audacity. It records my phone conversations crystal clear with no interference and with Audicity I can convert my recordings from mono to stereo and save it as MP3 or WAV. I highly recommend this for anyone out there that does a lot of business on the phone and has a need to record and archive phone conversations in a digital format. Thanks to all for their post.