internal hiss/noise

[AV-Boy]

I'm new at this, so please bear with me...

Trying to record to my PC with Sound Forge XP 4.5 - have my deck connected to the line input of my soundcard and everything is pretty much working (I'm hearing music). But, looking at the meters in SF, I seem to have noise - showing input levels of -33dB on both channels with or without the deck connected to the sound card. I've upped the sample rate in both record and playback in the Advanced Audio Properties, but it hasn't helped. I expect the VU meters in SF should show no input level until I give it some.

So, what's my problem?
Crappy computer (Micron 300mHz PII w/192 meg RAM)?
Crappy soundcard (Creative AWE64)?
Something else?

Thanks in advance for your help-

[drstawl]

-33 dB? That's about right for a Soundblaster.

Try applying a noise gate to mask some of this where you can.

[AV-Boy]

So, you're saying it's my crappy sound card... thought so. Would upgrading it solve that problem? Are all Soundblasters bad? I'm on a tight budget, but I did receive a CompUSA gift certificate for x-mas. Is anything I can buy there for under $100 going to help me? I'm hoping to get a clean stereo signal into the PC so I can burn to CD...

[SPINSTERWUN]

Originally posted by AV-Boy
So, you're saying it's my crappy sound card... thought so. Would upgrading it solve that problem? Are all Soundblasters bad? I'm on a tight budget, but I did receive a CompUSA gift certificate for x-mas. Is anything I can buy there for under $100 going to help me? I'm hoping to get a clean stereo signal into the PC so I can burn to CD...

Not for under a Hundred.

[SPINSTERWUN]

And not from Comp USA.