Too Bassy

[Pete Porchos]

I am using a sony Walkman Pro (old but still OK, I think - for playback anyway) to try and record from tape to Audacity. I am going line out on the walkman to line in on the sound card of my computer. I have 'line in' selected and the correct card in prefereces in Audacity. I can record and monitor (headphones in 'line out' on card in computer) OK, but there seem to be two problems.

The first is that when I play back the audacity file (before and after I change to mp3) it is rather bassy. Is there any way I can reduce this bass?

Secondly, after a minute or so the sound settings seem to change automatically and reduce the input volume.

I wonder if anyone has any comments.

Windows XP home
700Mhz
394MB RAM
Creative Soundblaster PCI

Thanks a lot,

Pete

[SAJ]

Don't know about the 2nd part of your question, but you can use the Filter effect to suppress the bass frequencies.

[Pete Porchos]

I butted in on Marc's thread, and sorry about that.

Alatham, you wrote:
Pete, I believe you have a bad sound card, since you can't record properly. If you can listen to the output of the Walkman somewhere else (plug headphones into it, or plug it into a receiver) and it sounds ok there, then you should be getting the same quality when you plug it into your Line In on your sound card. Unless your sound card is faulty.
I monitor the sound through the line out on the soundcard and it sounds fine as I am recording it. I have also tried on the headphone out on the walkman itself and that is fine too. Not too bassy at all.

Odd.

Marc, this walkman, although old is an excellent thing. The recording function is no longer reliable, but the playback is still as good as ever. I think Bruce Springsteen recorded 'Nebraska' on a machine such as this. So, no, I can't adjust the bass, but as I wrote above it's fine when I am monitoring.

The odd thing is that if I record from the walkman directly into mp3 using MusicMatch Jukebox then everything is fine. I thought I'd try to do better by using Audacity, but this is the problem I have.

And, as I mentioned earlier in the thread (or perhaps not, it's a while ago!) the volume automatically decreases after a minute of so, and will only go back up if I move the slider in the record bar area back and forth and then finally go right to the right hand end. But this is another problem. haha.

Thanks for your help. Progress is being made, if only slight!

[alatham]

The odd thing is that if I record from the walkman directly into mp3 using MusicMatch Jukebox then everything is fine. I thought I'd try to do better by using Audacity, but this is the problem I have.

And, as I mentioned earlier in the thread (or perhaps not, it's a while ago!) the volume automatically decreases after a minute of so, and will only go back up if I move the slider in the record bar area back and forth and then finally go right to the right hand end. But this is another problem. haha.

I must have missed your earlier mention of the decreasing volume problem. I've thought for awhile now that this is caused by faulty hardware or drivers. You aren't the first person to encounter this.

So far the only evidence I have is that someone else on this board had the same problem and replaced their sound card with a Behringer UCA202 ($40 at most online stores)and it works just fine now.

If you do try buying a new interface, let us know if that works. I'd really like to be certain about this kind of problem.