I’m looking for any insight into just why I ran across the following problem and what to watch out for going forward:
I’m transferring music from audio cassettes via Audacity. I did about 90 minutes in four files that, honestly, sound better than I would have dared to hope. Suddenly, on the next file, the wave looked impossibly loud, and the recording level meter was way up in the red zone. Adjusting recording volume did nothing, and pulling the audio cable out gave me the same wave. Yet actually, there was silence on playback. After a lot of hair pulling (and before I just gave up and came to this forum), I switched from MME audio host (default?) to Windows Direct Sound. Then I was back in business and finished several additional files.
In fact, there was another anomaly, but I’d have to go back to these cassette tapes to determine whether that was a problem on the tape or another malfunction in Audacity. (It was a sudden switch to mono in the middle of a recording.)
I’ve read a bit about the audio host but there’s not a lot of detail that might shed light on how they function, what the differences are, and of course, what to watch out for in the future.
So can anyone tell me more about what I saw? Perhaps you understand that inquiring minds want to know .
If you are using a USB interface (or a cassette player with USB) it’d normal not to be able to adjust the recording volume. You can boost after recording but if the signal is too high and clipped (distorted) reducing the digital level later won’t help so you have to reduce the analog signal before it’s digitized.
I’ve read a bit about the audio host but there’s not a lot of detail that might shed light on how they function, what the differences are, and of course, what to watch out for in the future.
I don’t really know the details either but WASAPI is the newest and MME is the oldest. I usually start with WASAPI and “work backwards” if I’m having some kind of problem. MME might be the “most compatible” but by now all “modern” software should work with WASAPI and all “modern” hardware should have WASAPI drivers.
WASAPI has “loopback” which allows you to record whatever is coming out of the soundcard. That’s most-often used to record streaming audio but it can also be used if you want to record a mix from different sources. Before WASAPI most soundcard manufacturers would include a driver feature (What-U-Hear" or “Stereo Mix”) in order to record what’s coming out of the soundcard, but not all soundcards had it, and it’s now more-rare so loopback is usually the only choice.
BTW - Pros usually use ASIO but it’s not a Microsoft standard and Audacity doesn’t support ASIO (unless you are a programmer and you compile it yourself). Most consumer hardware doesn’t support ASIO either but some RealTek chips do.
Wow. That is definitely worth knowing about. So thanks very much for the link. I’m not using USB in this instance however. This is an ancient Aiwa cassette player. It doesn’t even have a line-out port so I’m using the headphone jack cabled into the sound card, with volume cranked up to max. But the sound was more than acceptable from a 40-year old tape. And the shift happened mid-recording; the right channel in the wave simply dropped out completely.
Well, this too is worth knowing about if/when I do use a USB interface. So thanks for that.
Perspective is hugely important in problem solving. Since this is not my field and I haven’t done anything like this in ages, I would never have come up with this viewpoint on my own. In a way, I was just shooting in the dark when I changed the audio host. But if I never really understand the underlying mechanics, this perspective will definitely cut the time spent hair-pulling (not to mention help me feel more confident).
Not sure if I’ll ever use this, but thanks for further expanding my knowledge.
Its always worth remembering that you can still cut through all the more confused recent windows settings and go straight to the direct sound device management using the run command ( right click the start button ) and typing mmsys.cpl. Here you can turn off any windows special effects and usually set levels for recoding devices.
but I’d have to go back to these cassette tapes to determine whether that was a problem on the tape or…
And the shift happened mid-recording; the right channel in the wave simply dropped out completely.
Did you ever plug-in headphones so hear what’s coming-out of the cassette player?
Or have you tried another cable? Cables are the most likely thing to “break”, but there are a lot of other things that can “go wrong”, especially with computer recording…
Try wiggling the plug & cable…
And, do you have something else to plug-into your soundcard? You can try a DC or DVD player or the audio out on your TV. Or you can try the headphone output on your smart phone.
It doesn’t even have a line-out port so I’m using the headphone jack cabled into the sound card, with volume cranked up to max.
That’s fine. It’s usually the same quality and the headphone voltage is about the same as line level except it’s capable of driving the lower-impedance headphone load. Plus, the headphone-output always has a volume control which is sometimes handy. Sometimes the impedance load alters the frequency response so headphone-output might be actually better with a “light” high-impedance line-level load instead of headphones.
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