Amplifying

Im having some problems. I start a new audio track and press record. I talk into my mic and when Im done the waveform shows up as a straight flat line. I then amplify it and instead of staying in the middle at 0.0 it elevates to 1.0. I press play and hear either nothing or a horrible feeback of crackling. Ive been trying everything.Nobody I know who uses audacity has had this problem. I dont know where to look or start to fix my problem. If you want I can take a screenshot of whats going on and post it. Im willing to try whatever I just want my audacity to function properly.

Has anyone heard of this or experienced it? Im thinking itsgotto do with my settings or preferances. Thanks a ton in advance.

usually if you only get a flat line after recording then you didnt actually record anything. as a general rule you should see the waveform of what you recorded, that is unless you recorded it so quiet that the waveform is too small to see. In this case try using the normalise function instead of amplify. This will make the peak amplitude -3db. If you normalise it and you still get no sound then you have failed to record anything and i would suggest that you check that everything is plugged in and selected properly. ie did you plug into the line in on computer or microphone, have you selected the apropriate input in audacity.
good luck

if you are still having probs then post a message with your set up info (computer? windows? type of mic? sound card?) and im sure someone can help you

good luck

You can get that if you’re recording battery or DC level instead of audio or if there’s anything wrong with your sound card.

Set up for a normal recording. Turn the mic on and plug everything in. Turn the speakers off. Launch Audacity and click on the black down arrow under the red record meters. Select Monitor Input.

Once you do that, Audacity will show you bouncing lights in the red record meters to monitor the sound input without you having to go into full record mode. It’s a test tool. If there are no bouncing lights, your microphone isn’t getting to Audacity.

If you horrible uncontrolled feedback, then you’re on a Windows machine, right?

http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Mixer_Toolbar_Issues#Using_the_Control_Panel

Koz

I just started using Audacity this morning but I’m obviously doing something wrong.
My set up is as follows:
Playback Device: Built-In Output

Recording Device:
Device: Built-In Input
Channels: 2 (Stereo)

All I get is a blue flat line.

Can anyone help?

Try opening or importing an audio file into Audacity - does it play?

If it does, then that’s half of it sorted - so now to recording:
Look for the section on this page that is relevant to your operating system http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Mixer_Toolbar_Issues

The correct place to select the record and playback devices Audacity are “Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O”.
The most reliable place to select the recording source is through the mixer (as described in the page that I’ve provided a link for)

<<<Try opening or importing an audio file into Audacity - does it play?>>>

Here’s a known good working sound file. Piano trill. It’s six seconds long. Use this to check out your playback equipment.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/soundtests.html

Koz