Tails - did you get it figured out? Top of my head, I'd have to agree with Doug that it's some type of software issue - not hardware. I know I couldn't get audacity to recognize my USB recorder at all when I tried a bunch of years ago. My work around was to just record onto my sd card and then upload the file into audacity and all was well. I have mixcraft now. I've played with it only a tiny itty bitty bit. It recognized my USB recorder immediately - however the latency was too big of an issue for me that I went back to my tried and true method. I haven't tried it again yet in my newer higher powered laptop. BUT - I don't expect better results because I don't have an amazing sound card in this - even though I have more power.
Bill - I suggest getting yourself a recording device like I'm talking about above. Mine is a Zoom recorder (tascam makes some good ones too). You record right on it, onto an SD card. If it records as a .WAV file, you can convert it right on the recorder into an MP3 and can normalize the file right there as well. Pull the SD card out, plop it into the computer, viola! Done. (or like Russell says, use a digital camera - similar idea). If you WANT to play around with a DAW you can do so with the .WAV file, but you don't have to. This would be, in my opinion, the simplest way to make your own music into MP3's. If you're talking about converting old cassette tapes that are already recorded, that's a different story.
Maybe give them a call and chat about that, huh? 
Happy NGD! Time to start doing some recordings so we can hear these!