I Haven't A Clue!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob G
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Bob G

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I have the basic of basic questions. All I want to do is copy some old records, 33's, 45's, and 78's. I'll probably copy them to my hard drive or zip disk and then to cd. I tried a test. I plugged the line out of a portable cd player to the line in of my sound card. My home PC is about 3 years old, just your general all-around home PC. Anyway, I started the CD and used Easy CD Creator Spin Doctor to record. I can hear the CD as it is playing but don't hear anything when I try to play it back. In Spin Doctor you can preview the sound to set the level and when I click on preview, no sound. I know that something recorded because a file is created. Test file is a couple of megabytes. All sound levels high, nothing muted. All I want to do is copy some records, am I that dumb to think that's all I would have to do. The CD player I used for the test is a Sony the kind you carry around with you. Should I test with an actual stereo system that has an amp and such. I know you all are light years ahead of me but I would appreciate any help. If I'm doing it all wrong, HELP ME!

Thanks,

Bob G
 
Hi Bob G,

I'm not familiar with the Spin Doctor program, but if you
have created a file, and I'm presuming it's a wave file,
can you play it back with windows media player, or
winamp? Possibly it may be a setting that needs to
be changed in the Windows or Soundblaster mixer,if
that is what you have.

Let us know what kind of system you have, and
most important, what kind of audio card. That will
help narrow down your problem.

Mike
 
Hi Mike and thanks for answering. My sound card is an ESS Audio Drive. My system is an Aptiva P4, Windows 98. I think that my problem is that the CD palyer I used for testing wasn't powerful enough to boost the audio. Last night I turned up the pc volume levels and the speaker volume to the max and was barely able to hear what I recorded. I'm going to run a cable from my stereo to the sound card and try again and see what happens. If you or anyone has any suggestions please let me know.
 
Thanks Mike! Went to the site and it answered a lot of questions. I'm sure once I get started it will open up a lot more problems and questions. I'll let you know how I make out. Thanks for your help and quick response.

Bob G
 
You didn't say which version of Windows you are using, but you will want to go into the Control Panel / Multimedia (on Win98, I think its called Audio on XP) and make sure your sound card is selected as the "refered recording device"

And if it makes you feel any better, I'm having exactly the same problem with a Audigy card, under a fresh Windows XP install. And I have plenty of clues. I'm leaning towards a bad card, but I'm going to take one more crack at figuring it out tonight.
 
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To Mike/R White: After checking out the Roxio link I was able to make a test recording. I connected a radio to an amp and then to the sound card. Worked fine. This was just for testing only. Eventually when I'm sure of what I'm doing or at least thinking I know what I'm doing I'll connect my stereo to the PC sound card.

My biggest problem was that I needed to go into the Master Volume Control, select Options-Properties-Adjust volume. The box was checked for adjusting the volume for playback. I checked the box to adjust for recording. After I did that the level meter in Spin Doctor was registering the sound levels. It worked!!!

Now the new problem, I made my test recoring to a zip drive and on play back it seemed to be speeding up and then going back to normal. I didn't have time to try recording to my hard drive or CD, I'll try that tonight. Is this a symptom of something that I can easily correct? Anyone???
 
Hi Bob G,

Glad to hear things are starting to work for ya!

I'm not sure why the zip drive would be speeding up,
but I would think that audio running on a zip drive
would not give good results...too much information
to process through a parallel connection?...someone
may want to confirm that...I don't have a zip drive.

If you record to the HD or CD, you won't have that
problem.

Hope this helps!

Mike
 
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