Audacity stereo mix problems.

[ArkyChan]

The first day I got audacity I was happy to find out I could record things from my headphones that I was hearing, like youtube songs. So I messed around with songs for the rest of the day after changing one setting, the recording setting to stereo mix, which I had to do. Everything was fine and dandy for the rest of the day as I'd mess around with effects on songs like a giddy little schoolgirl, making song loops and other silly business. I want to do it the next morning, so I hop on my computer, record the song from youtube, that yesterday was perfectly normal, and I click play, just to hear the bass is blasting through my headphones like a shockwave. I look to see that the bass boost is set to 0, the playback device is stereo (which was ok yesterday), and I see that i added no effects. I desperately uninstall and reinstall. Didn't work. I find out i have to take out the .cfg file for audacity. I did it. Didn't work. I really want to know why my playback sound in audacity went from perfectly fine to utter crap quality. And no, I didn't change the quality settings either.

[steve]

Which version of Windows are you using?
What sort of sound card?
<<I look to see that the bass boost is set to 0>> where is that setting?

[ArkyChan]

I use Windows Vista Home Premium, my sound card is a realtek soundcard. When i said bass boost, i meant the "gain" option near the recording.

[steve]

When i said bass boost, i meant the "gain" option near the recording.

Where? In Audacity? In the RealTek Mixer? In the Windows Control Panel? Somewhere else?

I'm trying to get a clear mental picture of your set-up to try and see what's wrong with it, but the picture is very fuzzy at the moment. Too much information is better than not enough.

[ArkyChan]

[steve]

For Vista you should be using Audacity 1.3.12 and not the old 1.2.6 version, so you should definitely upgrade asap. http://audacityteam.org/download/

However, I suspect that the problem is due to settings in the Realtek mixer/control panel. Check thoroughly in there that all RealTek effects are turned off and that playback and record settings are set appropriately. The peak recorded signal in Audacity should be about half the vertical height of the track (-6 dB).

Note that if you have a VOIP program running (such as Skype), even in the background, it can change the sound card settings without you being aware of it. Such programs should be fully closed when you want to record.

[ArkyChan]

Before i posted this, i downloaded the newer one. Did the same thing to me. Also, which settings would be changed? I looked through the realtek panel, everything is the same i set it as, and those settings worked the first day.

[steve]

Before i posted this, i downloaded the newer one. Did the same thing to me.

I didn't expect it to fix this problem, but it has many other benefits and fixes many other problems.
Stick with Audacity 1.3.12 or we could be running into additional problems that will only confuse the issue.

Also, which settings would be changed? I looked through the realtek panel, everything is the same i set it as, and those settings worked the first day.

There are different versions of the Realtek control panel and I don't know which version you have.
Obviously something has changed. The problem is that we don't know what has changed, but somehow we need to find it.

Check at the bottom of the Transport menu (Audacity 1.3.12) - is "Software Playthrough" selected? It should NOT be selected.
Could you post screen-shots of the Realtek Mixer application?

[ArkyChan]

No, there was no check mark, so It's not that. Here are the realtek screen shots. Everything looks unchanged to me.

[steve]

The 5.1 sound could be a problem - Your recording is 2 channel stereo, so you are assuming that the RealTek drivers will correctly route a stereo mix to the recording input from a 6 channel source - I would not be confident about that working properly.

Also, the higher the sample rate and bit-depth, the greater the demand on the sound card. The "studio quality" terminology is marketing hype. For sound cards under a couple of hundred dollars the sound quality is likely to be worse at very high sample rates than at more modest sample rates. I'd recommend that you set the "default format" to "CD quality" and set Audacity to also use a default sample rate of 44100 Hz (assuming that you have upgraded to Audacity 1.3.12, the default sample rate is set in "Edit menu > Preferences > Quality".

In order to make an accurate recording you will also need to switch the Equalizer off (it is currently set to "soft").

I would also suggest that you set the default recording device to "Stereo Mix" (the current default device is the microphone).