help required please
every recording through my pioneer mixer seems to be really muffled and pretty much unbearable to listen back to after recording, it seems I have to have my speakers on the lowest setting and my mixer set so quite, so I can hardly hear the two tunes that I am mixing, for in to be clear enough to listen back to when recorded on audacity.
I would of thought, I have to adjust the settings on my laptop or on my mixer ???
Usually it’s the opposite problem with the recording too loud and distorted…
Have you tried a different cable/?
Have you plugged your mixer into an amplifier or your stereo to make sure you have a good signal going into the computer? Or, if your TV has audio/video inputs you can check the mixer with your TV.
Most laptops only have a mono microphone input. You need a line-input (usually color-coded blue on a regular soundcard on a desktop computer).
If your laptop has an audio configuration utility to switch between mic and line, switch it to line.
If you don’t have access to a desktop computer, in most cases, you’ll need a USB interface such as the [u]Behringer UCA202[/u]. (If you buy the Behringer, it has RCA connectors and you’ll need different cables.) Do not buy a regular “USB soundcard” because they are like laptops with only mic-in and headphone-out.
I would of thought, I have to adjust the settings on my laptop or on my mixer ???
You never know for sure what the problem is 'till it’s solved. 
The mic input is wrong… Otherwise, the way to find the problem is to swap stuff around. Plug the mixer into something else to make sure it’s working. Plug something else into the computer (a CD player, or the audio from a DVD player, etc.) to test the computer side of things.
pioneer mixer
Which pioneer mixer? How do you have it connected to your computer?
As above, if you have an analog mixer and a normal Windows laptop, you can’t directly connect them.
Koz