Recording problems

[djek]

I have been recording from a vinyl disk through a boombox amp. The amp output goes into my laptop's line-in jack (laptop is a Dell running XP with SP2). The laptop comes with Sigma Tel Audio for playback and recording.

The songs contain low- and high-volume segments. When I monitor the amp output thru earphones, I can hear it all fine. But when I record with Audacity 1.2.6, I lose all the low-volume segments if my boombox volume is on the low side, although the highs are fine. If I bump up the volume control by not much, I get the lows, but distort the highs and get clipping and clicking.

There are all kinds of options under the Effects menu, but they seem designed for playback only. I can't seem to configure for record. Even when I make changes using the audio track menu for a new track (e.g. Set Sample Format), the recording proceeds on a second track and ignores my settings.

So,
(1) In general, how can I go about configuring for record?

(2) In particular, is there some way to boost the low-level segments and constrain the high-level segments to avoid the problems I'm having.

For low-level segments, it's as if there is some threshold level that has to be exceeded before it records.
(3) Is this a problem with the sound-card or with Audacity (or my lack of experience with Audacity)?

Thanks

Djek

[waxcylinder]

Basically you can't "configure for record" (apart from setting the project sample rate and bitrate - and number of channels to record).

Audacity does not offer any real-time processing as you record - all effects must be applied after capture to the already recorded signal.

WC