Hissing sound and distortion

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mary Smith
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Mary Smith

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Hello, I've been reading a lot about home recording on this board and it has helped a lot. I play acoustic guitar and sing folk music, so the only thing I need is a little reverb or echo since I want everything to sound very natural. At the most, I might add a little percussion with a bodhran (Irish drum). I've downloaded N-Track and Cool Edit 2000 demos to see which I should get. I have a Tascam Porta 2 that I thought I could use as a mixer/preamp. I have an Audix mike which worked ok when I recorded onto tapes with the Tascam, and I'm using an acoustic guitar with pickup which I plug into the Tascam as well. However, although I can record it comes out sounding terrible with a hiss worse than what you would hear on tape. Maybe this is the Tascam and I need a regular mixer. One thing I noticed was that the advice here was never to use the mic input on the soundcard (which is a Soundblaster Live) but to use the line in. I tried that but I can't get any recording using the line in on the sound card. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Thanks to anybody who can help!
 
Sell the Tascam and the Audix and spend $80-$120 on an Art tube preamp or Behringer MX802 mixer. Then go from the preamp/mixer's main out into your SB line-in. While you're at it, spend $80 on an SM 57 or a better mic.
 
Thanks for the help

I'll try adjusting the soundblaster mixer and if that doesn't work I'll invest in the mixer and mic.
 
A note about the Windows mixer -- A common problem that people have is that enabling devices and setting levels in this application is not very obvious. By default all you see are the playback controls. For some reason it seems that Windows defaults to having the Mic In enabled and the Line In disabled.

To check the recording controls:

(1) Double-click on the little speaker icon to open the mixer.

(2) Select Properties from the Options menu. You get a dialog box that has a pulldown list labeled "Adjust volume for."

(3) Select Recording, and make sure the devices you want to be able to adjust are checked in the list below labeled "Show the following volume controls." Then click OK, and the levels for the input devices are shown for you to adjust and mute or unmute.

Hope that helps.

-AlChuck
 
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