Been trying to record a track from YouTube but when I play it back in my car stereo there is hardly any base and definitely no base coming through the sub. I have tried normalising the track and then increasing the base in effects, different recording devices, settings in my sound card and making sure I don’t have anything connected to the laptop but nothing seems to work. As you can tell I’m very new to audacity but have searched the forums and not found an answer to my cause. Any help would be appreciated.
Are you sure there’s bass on the recording? I’m guessing there’s just no bass on that particular video… Have you tried recording the sound from some other YouTube videos?
How does the “live” sound on your computer speakers compare to the recording on the same computer speakers? If you are listening to laptop speakers you aren’t going to hear the bass, so if you don’t have separate speakers with a good woofer try headphones/earbuds.
Or, does your car stereo have an auxiliary jack so you can connect the computer’s headphone jack and play the YouTube video directly in the car?
I have tried normalising the track and then increasing the base in effects
Bass boost usually works, but if there’s zero bass (or nearly zero bass) then there’s nothing there to boost. In general boost bass first, then normalize before exporting to prevent clipping (distortion). Boosting the bass will often push the levels into clipping and normalizing will bring the overall volume back down to a “safe” level. (Or if your peaks are not hitting 0dB, normalizing will bring the overall volume up.)
…different recording devices, settings in my sound card
Have you tried “Stereo Mix” or “WASAPI loopback”? You should be able to record the sound accurately.
The live sound is good with plenty of bass which I pass through my amp and audio monitor speakers n Yamaha sub. I’ve even streamed the same track from my phone directly through my car stereo and it sounds great! I have tried different tracks but all have the same problem.
Better to “download” rather than “record”. There a plug-ins (“Add Ons”) available for Firefox web browser that allow you to download YouTube videos (search with your favourite search engine to find a good free one). You can then extract the audio from the video with Audacity if you install FFmpeg (Audacity Manual).
Alternatively, use the “WASAPI loopback” method to record the audio: Audacity Manual
Ok guys & gals. It’s sorted. After trying a few more tracks as well as all your suggestions I still had the same problem so decided it must be the sound card. I went into the sound card settings and rolled back my device to a previous version and hey presto! I’m not sure when it updated its self (maybe when I upgraded to windows 10?) but I certainly didn’t update it (at least knowingly). Thanks anyway for everyone’s time and input,