im using the latest version of audacity and the playback quality (after ive finished recording), sounds awful, the mids and treble are just echoes and the bass is distorted, almost sounds like its being recorded in a tunnel or a church. ive been reading the past discussions on here about updating drivers and settings and ive done all that but it still sounds awful. ive re-installed audacity several times and im getting nowhere. Im trying to record from mixer and turntables to my laptop running windows 7. my soundcard is amd hd, the best they do. ive got gold connectors on my line in and ive got anti static grounding on my mixer. why do my recordings sound like im in a church? ive been through all the speaker volumes, recording levels, device managers, sound devices, inputs and outputs but its just the same old poor quality playback. what am I doing wrong??? 
Plugging a mixer into a Windows PC is not for the easily frightened.
On a whim, does your work sound OK if you play it on a different computer or personal music player? I got jacked one day at work by a machine that someone left in “Cathedral Sound” playback by accident. Of course, it wouldn’t pass any technical sound tests and I went nuts for a long time before I found it.
Did you plug your mixer Line-Out into the laptop Mic-In? That will cause problems.
Did you very specifically go through this wiki entry?
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_recording_troubleshooting.html#enhancements
Koz
Yes I did go through that wiki entry, several times infact, just to make sure I got it right. When I play a cd I bought from shop on windows media player, it plays fine, and even if I import an mp3 file from elsewhere into audacity, that also plays fine. But when I record in audacity, its the church like effect every time. I am using line out from my mixer to mic in on my laptop, as that is theonly option ive got. As far as my laptop goes, ive got mic line in and a headphones port. I do have optical line in but no optical line out on my mixer.
You have to find the control panel for the sound card and turn off its effects too. They are additional to the corrective “enhancements” in Windows “Sound”.
Also make sure you are recording in Device Toolbar from the external mic port and not the built-in mic.
Unless you have a switch or an option to change the input to line level stereo, the mic input will be either mono or poor quality phasey stereo.
You want to buy a USB sound card that has a proper RCA line-in. Behringer and Trust make these but there are other makes.
Gale
Computer Mic-In is designed for a microphone exclusively.
http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/computerAnalogMicrophone.jpg
It’s not a generic audio connection and it will damage anything other than a microphone. Some computers can switch between Stereo Line and Microphone, but most can’t. There is no “Mic Line-In.” Consult your instructions.
I use the Behringer UCA-202 with my mixer and Windows machine, although it will plug into any of the three computer types.
http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/peaveyUCA202Lenovo.jpg
Koz