Can't monitor myself while recording! what's going on?

[mostly harmless]

Hey,

Just wondering if anyone here knows why I can't hear what I'm playing through my computer speakers while I record. I can hear the recorded tracks, and what's either coming from my amp, or my mouth, but its not a part of the mix until its I'm finished recording. Could this be a soundcard problem.

mostly harmless

(P.S. I'm using a very basic set up. using a crappy mic, with a mic preamp into my very basic Windows Sis soundcard)

[manning1]

mostly. its prolly your windows soundcard. you need a sound card with pass through monitoring. if your using a standard sound card that came with your pc, these are only good for playing windows sounds rather than professional recording. you CAN get away with it. but its a shame to use such high performance software as cool with a plain pc soundcard because of sound quality. BUT there is a trick. to improve tracks.
record your soundcard as just blank audio(with mixer fader sending to sound card down !!). hilite a portion of the blank sound as a noise print and save it using cools noise reduction feature.. then after you record once again using cools noise reduction feature apply the noise print to the whole file using a low level of setting of the slider.
this will clean up the recorded track. also use cools silencing features to silence a track where nothing is playing. this way you will end up with a cleaner master. also - if you hear "sizzle" in a track you recorded - which you prolly will using the sound card you have. use cools very extensive filtering options and try judicious "cuts" with broad q factors in the area 2k to 8k. try various q settings.(both narrower and wider) to find the sweet spot. ie...sweep q to find the sweet spot.
peace.