Audio issues on my dell alienware aurora 16

[swolter1975]

Hi have been using audacity to record old vinyls to computer for a while, basically i have a vynil record player with USB connectivity.
So i open Audacity and can record directly form the Vinyl to WAV using the record player USB connectivity.
Now i have acquired a new laptop, a dell alienware aurora 16, and i have done the same configuration i have been using.
First i go to Transport > Transport Options > Enable audible input monitoring.
Then in audio setup, playback device i choose speakers realtek audio.
Audio setup, recordig device i choose my usb CODEC device (turntable).
Finally i activate the “Silent Monitoring” on the Record Meter.
But when i put a record on play on the turntable the sound is terrible and the meters reach only half of the way, but sounds terrible…

What should i check, change on my new laptop to get good qualitiy output? has anybody else experinced this beofre, this only happends wh my dell alienware autora as i went back to my old machine and setted up everything just the same and it works fine.

using audacity 3.7.5 on windows 11
thank you.

[DVDdoug]

@swolter1975

But when i put a record on play on the turntable the sound is terrible

Make sure Windows “enhancements” are turned OFF. They can foul-up the sound in all kinds of weird ways and it’s one of most common problems we see here.

and the meters reach only half of the way

That can be normal if it’s not caused by whatever is causing the distortion. Most USB turntables don’t have a recording volume control and some records are louder than others, so they design it to leave headroom before clipping (distorting) the built-in analog-to-digital converter.

Low digital recording levels aren’t a problem. You can run the Amplify or Normalize effect after recording. The important thing is that the levels aren’t too high and clip.

…If you remember analog tape, you wanted a “hot” signal to overcome tape hiss but with digital you don’t have that problem, and you can amplify digitally without re-recording. Analog tape is more forgiving on the loud-end because it starts to soft-clip as you go over 0dB. Digital is hard-limited to 0dB and it hard-clips if you “try” to go over.