Sound Card Woes Audigy NX

[novice2]

Hi, this is my first post so please be kind with any of my obvious errors.

I've been trying to record some music onto my computer

here is my set up

in leue of a preamp I have a Tascam 4 Track Recorder

the porta 2 MK II i believe

I have the headphone out of this running into my relatively new
Audigy NX soundcard. Into Line In

I've been having trouble with this since i bought it, when I attempt to change settings on the mixer or EAX buttons I get an error message telling me that the audio device is not supported. As far as I know all of this should work.

So anyway when I record the audio sounds fine when its playing through my headphones but what is actually recorded is distorted, horribly horribly distorted. Tinny digital sounding crap.

Particularly in the high range.

I don't know what the problem is exactly and any help would be appreciated.

Do the levels on my 4 track and/or my soundcard levels have an effcect on this? i do have a couple of them jacked up pretty high.

Also is there a reliable way of recording whatever is playing in my computer (internal sound)?

 

[Erk]

Answer

Hey man, for a starter get some knowledge. You can find all sorts of knowledge on the internet, and if not buy some books or go to an audio school like SAE. THEN, for god sake buy some gear and ditch the 4 trk and Soundblaster. Happ Recording.

 

[novice2]

Sorry but this the only equipment I can afford for the foreseeable future.

I am very, very poor.

And if I wasn't looking for knowledge on the internet, I wouldn't be here.

So anyone with any helpful advice?

 

[scoooops]

Ignore losers like Erk. Your setup will do just fine and will provide a good low budget starting point that will give great results once everything's set up right. i did some great demos on a similar setup. The 4-track should have line out or aux send RCA sockets. These are more likely to be at a level and impedence the sb line input is expecting to see. Also just do a simple check to see how the card levels are set. Click on the Windows "volume" control, go to "Options" and select recording page. Compare with the Playback page and check that the Recording level for the line input isn't set to max.

 

[radzikk]

I had the same problem years ago doing the same thing from a porta 3 into an SB Live 5.1. Definately use the line-outs on the 4-track you may need to get an adaptor. I believe the line outs on the 4-track are RCA and the card input is 1/8in stereo. The cable is common and pretty cheap.
The problem I had was that the input levels on the SB card were very touchy. I found the best way to work around it was to record a minute or two, (try to use the loudest part) play it back, check the line-in volume on the computer, and try again. If you still get distortion cut the volume a bit. (you can usally get to the volume controls by right clicking the speaker icon in the system tray.) lather, rinse, repeat...till it good.
The other thing is to look at the wave in wav-edit (or whatever they call it) once you get rid of the distortion, make sure your levels are pretty close to max level (this helps reduce the noise on the track). And then you can use the normalize feature to get all of your recording to have simillar volume levels.
Don't let anybody gey ya' down, we all got to start somewhere...
-k