Audacity Forum

I am attempting to recording bass guitar through audacity; however, I am finding that the tone is terrible- It has a very bad buzz to it and sounds terribly pinched. I have tried lowering the input to avoid clipping and looked at the effects to see if the can help but i am not having any luck.

As a side note, I am currently recording by plugging my bass into my amp and then plugging my amp into my computer via the amp's output jack. I was unable to get any volume when I plugged the bass directly into the computer. I was wondering if this could be the cause of my tone issues.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

There's an excellent chance you can't do any of those things if you have a Windows Laptop.

Both the guitar and the amp supply very high level sound signals (Line Level) and most laptops have very sensitive microphone connections.

Some laptops have the ability to switch one connection between High Level Stereo Line-In and Low Level Mono Mic-In. Most don't. I think Lenovo Laptops have both Mic-In and Line-In.

Most large deskside PCs and almost all Macs have Stereo Line in and you can plug either the guitar or the amplifier straight in.

I'm assuming your amplifier has a stereo Line-Out or you're using the headphone jack. Either will work.

So if you drilled yourself a hole with your computer, you can get out of it by buying a nice USB sound card. We did a review a while ago.

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9477

Koz