Stereo Mix recording low quality

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Audacity version 2.0.1
Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
Sound Card: SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio

When I try to record using the Stereo Mix, there is a very low rumbling sound that occurs. This occurs even if I take the input volume way down. I can get rid of the rumbling using a High Pass filter or using the ‘100 Hz Rumble’ equalization, but even still the quality of the recording is noticeably lower than the original. My sound card drivers are the latest, and I tried playing with the sampling rate setting on my sound card to no avail. Is it typical for Stereo Mix to lose significant quality or is there something I might be doing wrong, or could it be that my particular sound card happens to be of low quality?

2

Stereo-Mix should be a digital carbon copy of the show, unless you’re going all the way out to analog and back. Are you sure you’re not recording the laptop microphone and the rumble is the laptop fan? That would reduce the quality of the show significantly.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/help/manual/man/tutorial_recording_audio_playing_on_the_computer.html

Koz

3

No; in Audacity it says “Stereo Mix” as the Input Device, and I even have my microphone disabled. I agree that it should theoretically be the same data that gets sent to your speakers if it is working correctly, which is why I’m baffled by my results.