I have used Audacity for a long time and love it. I am in the process of transfering a old cassett into audacity for a widow who wanted to hear her late husbands voice. My problem is for the first time the recording only picks up the mic in the laptop and is not transfering the audio into the computer vis the mic line in which I have done many times before with success. When I go into control panels on the PC and go to sound all I get is internal mic which I do not want to use.
Any help would be great.
Sincerely,
Warren
Real “line in” inputs are rare on windows laptops these days. You should check your user
manual, but it is likely that if there is an input it will be for a microphone only, not
what you want.
When you say you have “done many times before with success” do you mean with this
particular laptop and OS, or with an older different one?
In any case the usual recommendation is an inexpensive USB audio interface such
as the Behringer UCA-202.
As flynwill says, ideally you should not be using the microphone input. These are usually mono or poor quality stereo and may distort unless you turn the input level slider down in Audacity. It may be acceptable for speech.
Assuming you are on Windows Vista or later, you can right-click in the Recording tab of Windows Sound and choose “Show Disabled Devices” and then right-click over the external mic input and choose “Enable”. See Missing features - Audacity Support .
Gale
mic line in
There is no “Mic Line-In” Some very few computers try to switch between Microphone and Stereo Line-In using software and it’s almost always terrible quality. Most computers have a pink Mic-In and a green or black Headphone connection. That’s what you need for Skype or other conferencing.
That won’t hook to a cassette machine.
Koz