home recording

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bob793

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I want to get music I've recorded live with an MD and microphone into my computer to burn cd's. Not sure if it's the soundcard or software or more likely my cluelessness but it's not working. My computer has an avance ac97 soundcard with only one mic input. The signal doesn't match the line or headphone out on my md and so it's distorted. If I plug in the MD to the back of the computer it plays the MD sound out of the "speaker out" ok, but doesn't record it. I'm using musicmatch plus. Do I need to buy a better soundcard?

Bob
 
Basically you should be able to plug your MD into the line in jack of your sound card and hit record in your recording software. Also you need to make sure you have the input turned on in your windows mixer so that you can record.

What software are you using to record?


Vice
 
Like he said... use the "Line In" on the back of your computer... you don't even really have a soundcard... AC97 is just a codec used mostly by onboard sound chips that are built right into the motherboard.

But in order to record anything, you have to tell Windows where you want to record from. Assuming you have a little "speaker" icon in your Windows task bar, just double click on that... then click on the "Options" menu at the top and click on "Properties". Then you'll see a selection button where you can chose either "Playback" or "Recording"... Choose "Recording". Below that, make sure that "Line In" has a check in front of it, then hit "OK". At the bottom of the window, you'll see that one of your recording devices will have a check below it. (you will prolly see "Microphone", "Wav", "CD Audio", "Line In", etc.). Make sure that you put the check under "Line In". That tells Windows that any application that records will get it's source from the "Line In" instead of the Mic (or any other device).


Try that and see if that fixes it. The simplest way to test your recording source is to use Window's built in Sound Recorder. That will always record accurately from the default Windows recording source.



WATYF
 
thankyou for your prompt reply. i'm using musicmatch plus software. my soundcard has only 1"mic in" and 1"speaker out". There is a "line in" on the back of the computer. If I plug the MD into that, the music plays through the computer monitors but it records only silence.
 
thankyou watyf. Tried what you suggest. When I select "line in" as recording source it goes back to "mic" when I click on record.

When I click back to "line in" while recording, it does record, but it still sounds distorted. The same happens in windows sound recorder.

I think you are right about the avance ac97 being a codec attached to the motherboard. Why is it distorted? Do I have to adjust the level manually? There is no peak light or meter. The playback sound quality is pretty good.

I'm using "headphone out" because this MD has no line out. (I'll try another machine with a true "line out" later today)

Thanks again for help.
 
You might want to check the volume level on the windows mixer of your line in input. It might be set too high... The headphone output should be ok to transfer your music from the MD.

Vice
 
OK... first off.. when you first double-click on the little speaker icon, you'll see the playback devices and their levels. One of those devices should be the "Line In". Make sure that is muted. That's why it was coming directly oat your speakers... you have it set to direcly play back whatever you plug in to the Line In.

Then, follow the steps I gave you before and go back to the Recording devices.. you'll see Line In, and Mic (etc.) and all their levels. Lower the level of the "Line In" until it doesn't distort while recording. You can keep the recording devices window open while you do you test and just adjust the fader until the Line In level isn't too hot.

lol... :p there will definitely be no VU meters or peak indicator... :p you're doing it the "rice and beans" way... you don't get any frills... but if you're lucky.. you might just get relatively tolerable results.

P.S. I suggest not using MusicMatch... it may be trying to override the record device settings (which is why it may be going back to "mic"). Just use the Windows Sound recorder. If all you're trying to do is record a wav file for your computer's Line In, then the built in Sound Recorder will do just fine and it won't cause any extra issues.

WATYF
 
Bob, everyone above has given you some good suggestions, but if all that fails, another reason that you are getting silence could be because you are using a mono cable out of your MD headphone out. This happened to me as well. Check the cable you are using for the MD headphone out and make sure it is a stereo cable which is the 2 black rings instead of the one. Your silence may be coming from one channel and the mono channel where the MD output is travelling to, but not the mono channel that the soundcard on your PC is picking up. Just my 2 cents.

Bruce
 
WATYF said:
P.S. I suggest not using MusicMatch... it may be trying to override the record device settings (which is why it may be going back to "mic"). Just use the Windows Sound recorder. If all you're trying to do is record a wav file for your computer's Line In, then the built in Sound Recorder will do just fine and it won't cause any extra issues.

WATYF
Click to expand...

WATFY, I agree with you one concept and not another. :) I agree with you that Bob should not use Musicmatch to perform any line in recording. I know musicmatch has this feature, but it stinks. Musicmatch is good for ripping CDs and converting MP3s to wavs and vice versa.

I disagree with you when you say the Windows sound Recorder should be used instead. One issue I have with the windows sound recorder is that it initially allows you only 60 seconds of recording and to get more you have to save the wav file and soundrec.exe will automatically give you a few more seconds. It is good if you do it once, but if you need a wav file of a 3 to 5 minute song, sound rec can be really tedious.

I suggest spending the $40 to $60 on a good recording software that is programmed to manipulate the PC sounds card. It is well worth it for any length file and you can save to MP3 and save over 30 megs on each song as windows soundrec.exe gives you only wav. :) This analogy of 2 kids fighting in high school yard: If the kids were windows sound recorder vs any decent PC sound card, the sound recorder would get its ass kicked. A good music editing software like cakewalk or sonic foundry would kick the sound card's ass. ;)
 
actually, you're right...

I'm basically assuming, that he wants to do this without actually spending any money. And the soundrec will allow him to record something with the least amount of hassle.. but yes... it has absolutely no features whatsoever :p and will not handle much.

If you want to record something from your soundcard and just want to dump it to a wav file, but still don't want to spend any money, I would suggest trying shareware/freeware downloads. There are plenty of wav editors out there that you can get for free... or you can try out some multi-trackers (such as n-track) which have free demos.

The good thing aboot trying more complex wav editors/multi-trackers is that those apps don't rely on Window's default settings. You can set them to record from whatever source you want. So as long as you mute the Line In in the Windows playback devices, then you can open up something like N-track and select your soundcard from the list of recording devices and when you hit "record" it will start recording from the device that you selected.

WATYF
 
Wow! This is great! I never used a forum before. Thankyou everyone! Got this new computer a month ago and trying to figure out what I can do with it. I have lot's of questions but will try to tackle one thing at a time and not digress.

I have Cakewalk Sonar but I can't figure out how to use it yet. I used Musicmatch Jukebox Plus to organise and play music I'd downloaded, and put it on cd's when it started draining my systems resourses. I was able to do that with MMJB after failing with a few others so I liked it for that reason. (though it retained many of the old tags and filenames I spent hours correcting)

I got OpenMG jukebox with my MD but the copywrite protection stops me from transfering recordings of myself to my own computer! That just doesn't seem right. It also gives me other problems I'll not mention yet. It'll take me a few days to find time to try all the things you've suggested but I wanted to offer this extra information and acknowledge your response.

Bob
 
Sonar can only accept the "mic in". The VU meters are off the scale at the lowest setting. Gave up with that and tried Soundforge 4.5 which allowed me to select "line in" and I completed the task of transfering music on my md to cd-hooray! However, the level was still very high so I had the fader at notch one instead of someplace nearer the middle as I would have expected for a "line out" to "line in" connection. There was also a fair amount of hiss which showed as a constant on the VU meters throughout. Soundforge has noise gates which might solve that problem but I'm thinking it would be better to track down the source of the hiss and eliminate it. I've looked at the volume and recording faders in windows and muted everything not in use. Maybe these 2 things are related?

PS
1. Yes, Windows recorder is good for testing the input signal
2. I prefer not to spend money (got sonar from a friend)
3. I want good results not just tolerable if possible.
4. I'm starting 2 new threads on Sonar and "soundcard v. software"
 
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