Dead air during recordings

[ashbysm10]

I have been using Audacity to record our church services. For the past 3 services, there is dead air during the recording. I am running the audio from our soundboard to the mic input on the laptop. The dead air does not occur at the same time each week and is not the same length.

Please help. If you need more info, please ask. I am not sure what is good info and what is not.

thanks
Steve

[kozikowski]

<<<audio from our soundboard to the mic input on the laptop.>>>

You fundamentally can't do that. You're probably listening to the laptop trying to resolve the overload. The two audio systems are completely different.

You may be able to plug your sound mixer into a Stereo Line-In instead of the Mono Mic-In if the laptop had one and that would work. Some laptops allow you to switch one connection between Line and Mic. That would work, too. Large Deskside PCs and Macs both have Stereo Line-In and that would work.

However most laptops are stuck with the one Mic-In and that's not going to work for you. A popular way around this is an external stereo USB sound card like the UCA202.

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

Koz

[ashbysm10]

thank you for the response. I will look into the inline option. It has been recording better, now that I have turned down the volume and fine tuned the aux inputs.

I understand what you are saying and believe you are on the right track. Hopefully for me, I can figure it out and not have to spend a lot of money.

thanks again.