Please help! Varying volume on recordings ...

[zaphod]

Apologies if this has been discussed before, but I am a nuby to this!

I keep getting varying volume on recording, especially in tracks with pauses and quiet parts. The symptoms are as follows; During the quiet parts (music playing, not silence) the recording volume seems to be ramped down actively; As the volume of the track increases, it seems the recording volume is ramped back up again. For tracks with quiet but repetitive intros the volume on playback is all over the place and very annoying. I just want one fixed recording level and a fixed playback level!

Does anyone know of any causes for this, functions I have to disable or anything similar. Everything else is working fine and I am havng a great time going through the old vinyl collection, but this part is REALLY annoying!

Please help!

Thanks

Zaphod

[kozikowski]

Windows machine are business computers and many times come from the factory set for SKYPE or video conferencing. They have various tools like echo cancellation, noise suppression, or automatic volume control.

This isn't good when you're trying to record your singing voice.

Dig through Windows Control Panels and see if you find a sound tool you don't recognize, or one that's labeled one of the above words, "Echo," etc.

One poster claimed the computer called it a product name like "ProCallAudio" or something like that. Turn it off.

Windows Control Panel
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... trol_Panel

Koz

[zaphod]

Thanks Koz

I have trawled through Control Panel enabling and disabling devices, drivers etc. under the sounds and audio devices icon, but to no avail, at least wihtout losing all sound altogether! I seem to have a C-Media sound card and I did find a Xear audio config icon in control panel, but no amount of of fiddling seems to be able to turn it off. I could not find anything on automatic volume control, echo etc.

I appear to be really stuck.

Any other suggestions gratefully received!

Zaphod

[steve]

I think Koz is correct, but you have just not found the necessary "switch" yet. The symptoms that you describe match exactly with the problem being caused by a sound card setting. Unfortunately the manufacturers are constantly changing the layout of the settings so unless someone has a computer exactly the same as yours we can't tell you exactly where to look. The offending setting may be called "Noise Reduction", "Noise Cancellation", "Echo Cancellation" or some other variant.