Audacity Forum

I just bought a new condenser mic and a tascam mixer that has a mic left and a mic right input. I tried recording into audacity and when I do it like clips the tops off my bottom and top of my vocals. I know it must be controlling the volume somehow but how can I change that. Ive tried the adjuster volume bars but it still clips it. I tried it on my laptop I have as well and it worked fine, looked 100% normal and sounded great so it has to be a setting on my desktop. I have windows xp and the desktop is alot better then the laptop so it should work at least just as good. I have tried a few things randomly but Im not sure if its through Audacity or my computer its self. The mixer volume isnt up that much either but it still does it. Any help would be great appreciated and Im sure I left some details out so if you need to know anything let me know. I just dont know I tried searching everywhere I read this is a good place. Thanks again in advance hope someone can help me its driving my crazy.

Is there a sound cable between the Tascam mixer and the computer? No fancy digital cables?

You have the backwards problem most people have. Most deskside computers have a sound card with both Mono Mic-In (pink?) and Stereo Line-In (blue?). The Line-In records high-volume stereo shows from a mixer and the Mic-In records mono low-volume sound from a raw analog microphone. They don't cross well.

People get rid of that big ol' noisy deskside machine for a handy, portable laptop and they're horrified that the laptop only has Mic-In and it distorts the mixer something fierce. (Mac laptops have stereo, high-volume inputs and no provision for a microphone.)

You are a celebrity. What can you tell us about the connections for each computer? Does the deskside machine have a sound card with three or four different colored connections and are you using the right one? We connect simple sound mixers to PCs at work and we do need to turn the mixer way down to avoid overloading the sound card, but it possible to get there. We can totally produce nice training sessions with good sound quality.

What is the connection on your laptop? That one should be broken and it may be more broken than you think, even if there is no apparent distortion.

Koz

The mixer is hooked up through USB. My mic uses phantom power. Its an oboard sound card but my friend has a pc pretty much the same onboard sound and his works fine, I am gonna update soon though but this should work. The laptop I just tried it on and it worked fine, no clipping whatsoever and the mixer settings were the same and same version of audacity. Both are connected through high speed internet. It seems like a setting in audacity or something, it doesnt make sense how it works on the laptop everything the same just unplug the USB and put it in the laptop but it wont on a desktop which is alot better. Any more help would be greatly appreciated.