Recording issues - sound cutting out

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

Hi guys
Bit of a newbie to all of this so bear with me.

I’ve recently acquired a Korg X-50 synth to write music on. I’ve got to the point now where I’d like to start experimenting with recording so downloaded Audacity on the recommendation of a friend.

My laptop (Toshiba) does not appear to have a line-in, so in attempt to record the sounds from the keyboard, I have run a cable from the Line-Out on the keyboard to the microphone slot on my laptop (using the relevant jack-plug).

The issue I have is that after 10-15 seconds or so of recording, the sound starts to cut out intermittently on the recording. I have a sneaking suspicion that the signal from the keyboard might be overloading the laptop (I read somewhere that the mic input on a laptop is usually very sensitive).

I have turned down the mic input volume to the lowest possible on the laptop but that doesn’t appear to have much effect. Is there any way around this? I guess the alternative is to buy a piece of hardware to get around this problem - is there any you guys can recommend? Looking back at this thread : https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/recording-problem-from-guitar-amp-to-laptop/20531/1 - which I think is a similar issue, a Behringer UCA-202 has been recommended to solve the problem.

Can anyone advise? Many thanks in advance :slight_smile:

2

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/peaveyUCA202Lenovo.jpg

But that’s not what’s wrong. You didn’t tell us anything about the laptop, but if it’s Vista or Win7, you may need to turn off voice management and special effects. Let’s start there.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/help/manual/man/faq_recording.html#enhancements

And also,

http://manual.audacityteam.org/help/manual/man/faq_recording.html#skips

Koz

3

Many apologies - I have a Toshiba L655-158 Notebook, running Windows 7 64-bit. The soundcard is a Conexant CX20671 HD (I think).

On review, the adjustments to the enhancements you suggested appears to have resolved the issue, so many thanks.

Re the UCA202, is this something that will improve the quality of my recording sound?

4

I use a UCA 202.
The recording quality of the built-in sound card of my (Acer) laptop is rubbish. The recording quality of the UCA 202 is very much better and quite good enough for copying tapes to CD. The main limitation of the UCA 202 is that it does not have a recording level control. That should not be a problem recording from your Korg as you should be able to control the output level of the Korg so that the recording level is right.

5

Past all the overload, nose and distortion issues, the Mic-In on most Windows laptops is mono. You’re probably listening to two copies of Left rather than Left and Right of the stereo show. Koz

6

Great, so I assume the UCA202 will allow me to record in stereo(thus a much improved sound)?

7

The UCA 202 has stereo in and out.