[LAU] tool to transfer tapes to MP3

There are tools on Windows to automate the transfer of tapes to MP3: the software can sense when the record is actually being played and it starts recording, can sense when the record has ended and it stops recording, it can even merge two sides of the same tape into the same file, etc. It does that, I guess, by monitoring the signal on the inputs. Of course, all this stuff can be done even without a specialized tool, but when you have a huge number of tapes to transfer, it's nice to get a little help from a specialized app like that. So, is there anything like that available for Linux? -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/