Audacity Forum

I am experiencing difficulty recording. I get active voice meter for 10 to 12 seconds and then the line goes flat and the volume bottoms out. If I continue to speak it will occasionally demonstrate activity for a word but then returns to a flat line with greatly diminished volume. How do I correct this?

Not enough information. What are you recording? how are you recording it? Is this Vista? what's your hardware? .....

I am reading text from a news letter. I am using windows xp on a Dell Inspirion 9400 laptop. I purchased a new Logitec headset with attached microphone.
Please let me know if there is any other information you need to diagnose this issue.
Thanks

It sounds like you have some sort of "noise reduction" or "automatic gain control" happening with your headset or sound card that is messing things up. Headset microphones have been found to often give very poor results with recording because they are designed for other purposes (such as Skype), and not for recording.

Diligently go through all the settings for your sound card and headset and turn off ALL effects and you may be able to record with this headset, although even then the sound quality is not likely to be great.

A headset microphone such as this: http://www.stuff-uk.net/?s=ST-980364-0914 will not give anywhere near the sound quality of something like this: http://www.allinnone.com/instrumentpro/ ... -ew-3.html

Thanks for your advise. I looked over my sound card and audio settings but did not find anything that gave me the option of turning them off. I'll pursue another microphone and see if this provides better service. Thanks for your help.