I'm not familiar with what program or sound card you're using (I'm Mac, not PC), but it sounds like you may possibly have an automatic gain setting on somewhere in your computer. If you sound-digitizing software or whatever software is controlling your sound card has "hardware controls", try opening that. Make sure that your "automatic gain" (they usually add this option for you to be able to record decent sound with a lame computer microphone!) is off, and if there is an option that lets you monitor and adjust your imput levels, try playing your minidisk player into your machine while adjusting those levels to a point where the signal's loud and you're just under the red (digital zero) during the peaks. This way, the imput level's set and your computer won't have to automatically adjust the levels when you play the minidisk into your sound card (which causes distortion when the songs starts up) and bring it down again when the song's over (causing more distortion when there's no sound present). Hope that was it!
