Technological Troubles

[Othello]

Ok so the other day I had the bright idea of hooking my PA up to my computer using a 1/4th female to 1/8th male converter to record some of my bands jams on to the ol' computer. Well, it went great the first day, everything was fine. The next day I wake up and start to record a guitar track with my friend and noticed that it is clipping everything at .5 instead of 1. Why is this? Can I fix it? Did I just screw up my sound card?

[steve]

You need to check the entire signal chain - from microphone through to the recording software. The first thing to identify is where in the chain the signal is clipping. My guess would be that you could be driving the sound card input too hard.

[Othello]

I've decided to buy a USB audio interface instead of using my line in and all that stuff.