Audacity Forum

I am transfering from a sony dat to a hard drive - line out>line in. The db level on the dat is mid scale, -12 to -4, viewed while recording or playback and sound is perfect, but Audacity meter reads at 0 and beyond during transfer, and the transfered sound is clipped. The sampling rate for the dat and audacity is set at 44.1hz. I am running windows XP.

then between dat and audacity something is adding gain
lower it

if you cant lower it in the sound card or wherever
then lower the output of the dat

There are different standards for "Line level".
Consumer audio equipment usually has a nominal level of −10 dBV
Professional audio equipment usually has a nominal level of +4 or +6 dBu

If the Sony DAT is using the professional standard, a full-scale signal will overload a consumer standard line level input.
It may be worth checking the manual for the Sony to see if the output can be switched to -10 dBV

<<<It may be worth checking the manual for the Sony to see if the output can be switched to -10 dBV>>>

Probably not. DAT machines are aggressively professional. Most of us without TV stations in our house use the headphone output and use the headphone volume control for output level.

Koz