I record hearings and depositions. The input level slider keeps dropping down on its own. The sound device is my Behringer UCA-222. It is a basic USB sound card with no settings that could account for this. I found a couple old articles about this problem, but neither had anything applicable.
Make sure Windows “enhancements” are turned OFF.
Automatic volume control is one of the “features” and it’s getting “very good” at filtering out everything except spoken voce and causing all kinds of strange problems.
There are few settings in Windows and no enhancements. This is Windows 11, and I didn’t find anything called “enhancements” or that appeared to be enhancements. That’s what I meant by the existing articles aren’t applicable. Do you have any idea where I should look for Windows enhancements?
You did not follow DVDdoug’s link?
Yes. I looked in both Playback and Recording, and neither had anything about enhancements. The driver for this USB device is rather basic.
I looked again. The instructions for Windows 11 don’t match my screen. There is no “All Sound Devices” menu, although there is a list of all available sound devices. There is no “Enhance Audio” button. I am a Windows guy, a Microsoft Certified Professional, an A+ certified tech, and I coauthored two books on PC repair. The general appearance of the screens look the same as what’s in the instructions, but the items described aren’t there. I also looked in the sound device dialog boxes in Control Panel, and the sound mixer, et cetera.
Does anyone have any other ideas?
Does
Paste the results of your diagnostics screen so we can take a look.
There can be more than one layer of enhancements , e.g. MaxxAudio, DTS, Dolby, HP sound, etc.
The windows aren’t even there, and there is nothing like that. On the output, which should have nothing to do with record level, there is Spatial Sound, but it’s off and has been off. On the input, there is Mono–Combine left and right channels, which I set on purpose, but that shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
Which diagnostics screen are you referring to?
What other applications with sound do you use? Skype? Zoom, Google Meat? Multi-Player Games?
They all have the ability to affect sound volume and generally, you have nothing to say about it. Even if you close the applications when you record, some of them don’t close all the way.
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Have you ever done a Clean Windows Shutdown? Regular Shutdown and Restart can leave trash behind. Clean Shutdown doesn’t.
Koz
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I think you put me on the right track. I use Audacity to record from Zoon, Teams, or occasionally, WebEx. I have a Behringer UCA222 interface with the outputs and inputs connected to a mixer. I use a microphone plugged into the mixer. It all works perfectly except for the variable input level.
Let’s see if this works. Forum link management can be magic.
I published two methods of perfectly recording an on-line meeting. The above is doing it with a small sound mixer and two computers.
The other method is getting Zoom to do it. If you ask nice, they will even supply individual sound files for the participants.
My two-computer method in that case was with Skype. Which app doesn’t matter. The goal is to convince the app that there is nothing wrong here. Move along, move along.
Koz
Oh. There is another way. If you have a quiet, echo-free room to record in, you can get the computer to play the far side(s) to a speaker/room instead of headphones. Then you just record the room. I did this on a little stand-alone recorder and I’m going to get a picture of that any minute now.
I dug our company out of trouble that way. I played the multi-time zone production meetings to conference room speakers. Then I recorded the room on a second computer.
There is another two–computer trick. Put a computer with no microphone in the corner somewhere recording the far side only. You join the meeting on a separate computer. All the audio is “Far Side.”
Koz
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I considered using two computers, but it will be easier for me to deal with the volume changing. Everything else works perfectly. The volume never gets too low for me to transcribe. It’s just annoying. But I definitely appreciate this suggestion.
One more idea. Chris wrote a compressor so he could enjoy listening to opera in the car. It figures out the components of the songs and then forces them to all come out the same volume.
At one time I had recommended values for the settings, but I think the default ones work OK.
There is only one shortcoming. It’s a “look-ahead” compressor and so it doesn’t like running off the end of a song or show. You should put something on the end of the job that you are just going to cut off later.
I’m going to look in older computers for the compression values. I must have notes on it somewhere.
Koz
Looks interesting. I’d have to test it thoroughly by using previous recordings.
I found some support stuff in an older machine. There are two different versions and I have some screen grabs of what it’s supposed to look like. It’s a Nyquist (ny) file.
I’ll whip up some fresh coffee and hit it in the morning.
As we go.
Koz
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Thanks so much.
Someone who is a Windows guy, a Microsoft Certified Professional, an A+ certified tech, and coauthored two books on PC repair should know about the DirectX Diagnostic Tool.