Strange noise

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ProfCarlos

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I am trying to record a CD from some tapes of my radio show. I had already recorded some tapes in my old Pentium 166 to make RA files, and it worked just fine.

Now, although the monitor audio was just fine, the WAV file had this incredibly loud high-pitched hiss, sometimes louder than my own voice (it's a talk-show).

I used the paragraphic EQ Sound Forge 4.0 function to cut out most of the hiss, but it made me loose sound quality. What I really can't get is why the hiss is in the WAV file and doesn't show in the monitor.

I am using now a K6-2 400 with a lousy motherboard with a built-in soundboard, 64 Mb RAM... Would it be the built-in soundboard?!

Thanks in advance,

Carlos
 
i am assuming you are using the line input....have you tried recording from a cd player or some other source to see if you get the same prob? are you monitoring with your source or thru the computer sound card?
 
I'm monitoring through the computer speakers, not from the source. There is the white noise we can expect in a cassette tape, but not the loud hiss.

I tried to record from a microphone and got the same problem (using the MIC input instead of the LINE IN, where I first had this trouble while recording the tapes). I didn't try to record from another source through the LINE IN. I tried to install the old Aztech 16 soundcard I used in my old computer, but the server is constantly busy, and I couldn't download the drivers yet. :_(
 
I would check to see if all your audio devices except "line-in" are muted in Windows when you are recording. I'm not sure I fully understand how you're monitoring. I wouldn't suspect anything particularly wrong with your hardware setup itself... unless the card is actually defective. Go through the signal chain, whats the source? How is it connected to the PC card? What software are you using to record?
 
>I would check to see if all your audio devices except "line-in" are muted in Windows when you are recording.

They are.

>I'm not sure I fully understand how you're monitoring.

Through the computer speakers (line-out).

>I wouldn't suspect anything particularly wrong with your hardware setup itself... unless the card is actually defective. Go through the signal chain, whats the source?

That's what I can't find. It is not in the cassette tape, and it doesn't show in the soundboard output to the speakers. It misteriously appears in the WAV file. I managed to isolate some four or five different tones, ranging from 3.5KHz to 12 KHz, and they are quite stable. Altogether, they form the loud hiss whose source I'm trying to locate.

>How is it connected to the PC card?

I'm connecting a tape walkman to the soundboard's line-in jack. The soundboard is a built-in soundboard in the computer's motherboard.

>What software are you using to record?

Sound Forge 4.0.

Thanks for any clue.
 
Yup, so far "strange" is appropriate.

Your monitor signal has to go through both the AD and the DA converters on your sound-card in order for you to hear it through your computer speakers. If the problem was the sound card's converters, I'm pretty sure you'd hear it while monitoring as well.

Have you tried recording with different software just to test? I'm starting to suspect that SF4 isn't talking to your card correctly, for some reason.
 
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