Need help on recrding from my four track into my computer!

B

bornmad

New member
Hey guys.

I have a question about recording from a four track onto your computer, and I hope you can help me.

I will try to give as much information as I can, so I apologize if it sounds as if I'm rambling.

I record directly into a Tascam Porta 02. It has no extensive mixing controls, just your basic four track recorder with pan controls and so on.

My computer is a 233 MHZ pentium with 48 megabytes of RAM.

I have a little over 2 gigs of hardisk space on my computer.

I am running Windows 95, and I record my tracks through the Spindoctor recording program.

Here is the problem I am having: I lay down a track on my four track and then I connect my four track to my computer.

Intiitally I was connecting my four track through the microphone jack on my computer and it would play through my speakers wonderfully. I would then press play on my four track and record through my microphone jack a track I had already recorded.

Then when I would go to play back the recorded track it would sound very muted with a lot of background noise in it, almost as if there were interference from the computer of some sort.

I tried adjusting all the levels on my computer's volume controls, but nothing seem to help too greatly.

I then attempted to plug my four track into my speaker outlet, and record it through there, which of course did not allow me to hear what was being recorded. Yet nothing occurred on playback. I could barely hear the feint whispers of what I recorded in the background.

Again with my four track plugged into my speaker outlet I then tried to adjust the different levels on my computers volume control box, and nothing helped its sound.

I have been told that with my sound card I should be able to do this successfully, and have even known others who do it successfully with a regualr soundcard.

I'm not sure if I am not getting the volume levels right on my computer or if I am simply unaware of somehting that needs to be tweaked.

Here are the options in my volume contorls:

For recording they are: 1. Recording control 2. Line in 3. Microphone 4. CD Audio 5. AuxB 6. Synthesizer 7. Wave

They are the same for my playback settings as well with the exception of "PC Balance."

Which ones should I be checking and adjusting in recording and in playback? I assume this is my problem, and that I am not getting the levels just right.

Otherwise I don't know what I am doing wrong. The track level on my Tascam is fine, and the only other thing I can assume is that I am not tweaking something just right.

Can anyone help me with this. I assume it is a very basic problem that I am having.

Thanks for your time.
 
It's a common problem. You should be plugging into the line-in jack on your soundcard, and NOT the mic jack. plugging into the mic jack screws up your sound when attempting to record anything from another source other than a mic. guitar processors, multitrackers and such are meant for line-in.. then in your recording mixer check the line-in box and set the volume to about half, and give it a whirl.
 
Boomersrec said:
Nicely done SAPIENTIA.
Click to expand...
If he, she or it is even still alive.

Chrissake, it's been more than FIVE YEARS!

Do you people dig back into the archives looking for questions you're marginally qualified to answer just to increase your post count?




:confused:
 
Recording from a 4 track to a PC is a fairly common thing to do. The process is pretty simple. The conection to the sound cardshould ALWAYS be through the line in or aux in, NEVER through the mic in, you can do serious damage to the soundcard by using the mic input. The conection from the 4 track should be from the line out or monitor out, either will work but sometimes one will be clearer than the other. Conecting speaker lines to the mic in on a soundcard will almost always blow the soundcard, in fact you should never conect the speaker out from any device to any input on a soundcard. Double click the speaker icon on your task bar, this will open your master volume control, choose options>properties>recorder, make sure the line in is not muted and set the volume to a little above 50% but not over 75%. If this doesn't help you may need a new soundcard. Also with a small amount of ram you are likely to encounter a lot of latency (delay) problems, more ram=better performance.
 
I was getting really confused by the tech-specs on this person's computer - which prompted me to at the original post date. Let's keep this thread going!!

Or better yet, let's leave it here, and will all promise to meet back in another 5 years.
 
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