Vinyl Digitizing Cable: Phono to USB converter like iMic?!

[cryyourselftoash]

looking for something that's an improvement on the iMic for digitizing my records. Have a decent turntable with a preamp so need something that converts the audio signal from the phono leads into a digital signal that will plug into the USB port on my laptop, so no PC, soundcard options.

Was using the iMic which has been okay but it doesn't work properly with windows vista. it only records the right and left channel combined, so you get the same thing in both ears rather then 2 separate left and right channels which will capture all the panning and instrument separation and what not...

sooo what do any vinyl digitizers on here use/recommend as excellent phono to USB conversion?

whilst we're on the subject any recommendation for a program that converts you wav recordings of vinyl into FLAC? can't get EAC to do it?

[hollywooddreams]

You can buy an amp that will plug in via usb - I have one of those, however I found that it worked better with the line in option on my computer rather than the usb option. Here is an example of the one I have:

USB Phono Preamp,Turntable Preamplifier Pre Amplifier - eBay (item 400060606948 end time Jul-18-09 12:30:35 PDT)

Also I am pretty sure that you can convert to FLAC with Audibile. At the very least, you can save the file as wav and then use another program to do a straight converstion.