Why do recordings get truncated at around 0.43 on the amplitude vertical scale of the Track Control?
They always truncate at 0.43 no matter what settings I change:
Changed the microphone recording volume for the sound card.
Changed the output volume on the tape-deck and amplifier. It does affect the amplitude, but when the amplitude goes above .43 it truncates.
I’m running on Win XP SP2. Audacity V2.02 (installed from the .exe installer)
Panel - “Waveform” has been selected.
I’ve enclosed a screen dump.
Is there anything I can do to make it truncate when it hits 1 instead of .43?
The problem is that you are sending a relatively large signal from your amplifier into a microphone input.
Microphones produce a very tiny signal, about 1000 x less than the signal from a tape recorder. A microphone input is designed to work with tiny microphone signals and cannot handle the much bigger signal that you are feeding into it.
You may be able to get away with turning down the amplifier level really really low and then turning the microphone recording level back up, but note also that microphone inputs are usually mono, so you may not be getting a proper stereo recording even if you set Audacity to record “2 channels (stereo)”. What you really need is a “line level” input. If your sound card does not have “line in” then you could get a USB sound card that has “Stereo Line In”.
Strange… That looks like something in the analog is clipping. Maybe the analog “side” of your soundcard is defective. Normally, the digital signal (out of the soundcard’s analog-to-digital converter) should clip at exactly 0dB (1.0 or 100%). Or, maybe the analog circuit in your tape machine is clipping.
Changed the microphone recording volume for the sound card.
Changed the output volume on the tape-deck and amplifier.
Are you saying this happens with a microphone on the soundcard’s input and with a tape machine connected to the soundcard’s line-input?
You might need to tell us a bit more about your hardware and setup. Do you have line-out from your tape deck, or tape-out from you amplifier, connected to line-in on your soundcard?
Are you using a laptop computer (with only a mic-in and no line-in) or a desktop computer with line-in?
Are you using an aftermarket soundcard/interface, or whatever came with your computer?
Changed the output volume on the tape-deck and amplifier. It does affect the amplitude, but when the amplitude goes above .43 it truncates.
So when you lower the volume, the waveform no longer looks clipped (all flat across the top/bottom)?
