No Line-In in Vista

[George22]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 with Vista. It lets me record with Audacity 1.2.6 only in mono even though I select 2 channels in Edit/Preferences. No dropdown window for selecting StereoMix/Phone/Line In, etc. appears on the screen. I realize that this is a common problem with Vista machines, and has been much discussed here. My computer has a Sigma Tel HD CODEC driver, the latest available at the Dell site. Does anyone know what Sigma Tel driver works with Audacity on a Dell Vista machine? Also, if I do a hard-drive partition and put Linux/Ubuntu on my computer, would Audacity be likely to work with my Sigma Tel driver, or would I need to download another (hopefully easily available) driver? Thanks. I have used Audacity with a Dell notebook with XP and had no such problem. I use an ARTcessories gismo to change from analog to digital sound in recording LP's.

[steve]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 with Vista. It lets me record with Audacity 1.2.6 only in mono even though I select 2 channels in Edit/Preferences. No dropdown window for selecting StereoMix/Phone/Line In, etc. appears on the screen.

I don't use Vista myself, but there may be some information here that helps: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... s_Vista_OS

if I do a hard-drive partition and put Linux/Ubuntu on my computer, would Audacity be likely to work with my Sigma Tel driver, or would I need to download another (hopefully easily available) driver?

It will probably work using the ALSA driver. The easiest way to test without the need to install is to use a Live CD and install ALSA and, AlsaMixer if they are not already installed.
I would recommend the latest desktop version Ubuntu, as the packaged version of Audacity (v.1.3.4) is known to work on Ubuntu. There are a few stability issues with that particular version, but if it works, then it is quite simple to up upgrade Audacity to 1.3.5, which is very stable and very few issues.

[hellosailor]

George, there has been some heated debate about why some vendors--specifically including Dell and Lenovo--seem to be either dropping support for stereo recording, or actually blocking it at a firmware or registry level in Vista. Some systems no longer have line inputs, some have changed the MIC input to mono only, and some folks allege this is all an RIAA-sponsored program to discourage copying.

As someone who has a Vista laptop and uses Audacity with it, I can tell you that "for sure" what is sometimes called "Stereo mix" has been somehow locked out of the computer. I had to go to an external sound card, in a card slot, and then voila, mysteriously that hardware can work in full stereo with no problem. But, the internal sound card can't record in stereo--even though it plays it, and in theory the hardware supports it.

I would suggest looking for a USB sound adapter, or a card adapter, and handling your audio through that. Check around on the web, you'll see that "simple" stereo recording is no longer possible with a number of machines unless you use XP (instead of Vista) and/or additional sound card/device.

I probably should have used a USB sound "card" but foolishly bought a Creative X-Fi card. I say foolishly because their Vista drivers didn't work under Vista and their tech support blithely pretends to speak YnGlitch, can't recommend using them at all, even though I finally got this one to work after literallly months of trouble.

There are sometimes some stability issues with the release version of Audacity under Vista, I'm hoping the beta will mature soon. Meanwhile, even with hiccups, I have nothing but praise for Audacity and the generousity of the authors. The "mono" problem definitely isn't from Audacity!

[waxcylinder]

What hellosailor says is very true.

Two USB soundcards that get recommended a lot on this forum are the Behringer UCA202 and the Edirol UA-1EX. The Behringer is cheaper, the Edirol has more features - you can check the specs of both on t'interwb and both companies are happy to deal with pre and post-sales technical queries. What you will need to do with the soundcard is to loop back the RCA outputs to the RCA inputs.

When I bought a new Dell laptop recently I insisted that Dell "downgrade" the O/S to XP-Pro (I note though that it is actually licensed as Vista, enabling those wonderful Microsoft marketing folk to claim it as yet another Vista sale ...). Having XP on the machine has enabled me to record streaming audio on this laptop - so you might want to consider putting XP on your computer - though I supect it's easier just to buy the soundcard.

WC

[George22]

I want to thank you guys for the valuable info, especially hellosailor. I in fact returned my new notebook with Vista to Costco and got all my money back. I am now in the market for a used notebook with XP, but am in no rush to buy since I can use my wife's Dell XPS M1330 notebook with Vista to record at least in mono...I have plenty of old mono LP's. I will have to look for a sound card, and if that works on her Vista notebook, then I will feel free to buy almost any kind of notebook for myself. Thanks again.

[George22]

What hellosailor says is very true.

Two USB soundcards that get recommended a lot on this forum are the Behringer UCA202 and the Edirol UA-1EX. The Behringer is cheaper, the Edirol has more features - you can check the specs of both on t'interwb and both companies are happy to deal with pre and post-sales technical queries. What you will need to do with the soundcard is to loop back the RCA outputs to the RCA inputs. WC

WC, I don’t understand what you mean by “loop back the RCA outputs to the RCA inputs.” I presently connect the RCA cables from the turntable to the RCA input plugs on the ARTcessories USBPhonoPlus v2 (http://www.artproaudio.com/products.asp ... t=9&id=128). The USBPhonoPlus v2 is connected to the computer by USB cable. The two RCA output plugs on the USBPhonoPlus v2 are connected to RCA input plugs on the amp. This allows me to hear the music that I am recording. How would the Behringer (http://www.behringer.com/uca202/index.cfm?lang=eng) and the Edirol (http://www.roland.com/products/en/UA-1EX/) sound cards fit into this system? I was hoping to find a sound card which could be connected to the computer by a USB port and to the USBPhonoPlus v2 by USB cable…or for a sound card which could be plugged into a USB port on the computer and which did not need to be connected to the USBPhonoPlus v2. ??? Please help, I have no experience with sound cards!

[waxcylinder]

George,

I should have read your original post more closely. You already have an external soundcard - it s the ARTcessories USB Phono Plus - so you do not nned to buy either the Edirol or the Behringer. The USB Phobo Plus is a combined phono pre-amp and external (ADC and DAC) with a USB interface to your PC. When this device is plugged in it completely btpasses any onboard soundcard on your PC - so I am confused as to the references to the Sigmatel device drivers in your original posting.

For recording from vinyl the connections you describe should work.

When I spoke about looping back I was assuming that you wanted to recoird streaming audio from the internet or from another audio player application. And all I mean by looping back is connecting the outputs of your USB Phono Plus to its inputs with a pair of RCA cables.

WC

[George22]

George,

I should have read your original post more closely. You already have an external soundcard - it s the ARTcessories USB Phono Plus - so you do not nned to buy either the Edirol or the Behringer. The USB Phobo Plus is a combined phono pre-amp and external (ADC and DAC) with a USB interface to your PC. When this device is plugged in it completely btpasses any onboard soundcard on your PC - so I am confused as to the references to the Sigmatel device drivers in your original posting.

For recording from vinyl the connections you describe should work.

When I spoke about looping back I was assuming that you wanted to recoird streaming audio from the internet or from another audio player application. And all I mean by looping back is connecting the outputs of your USB Phono Plus to its inputs with a pair of RCA cables.

WC

WC, I thought you might not have read my first post closely, but somehow the PhonoPlus does not work with Vista and its Sigma Tel sound card. I don't know why. Cf. http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic ... dio#p19156 where the same problem is discussed, but in regard to XP. If another external sound card would solve my problem, please, anyone, tell me what it is or might be!

[steve]

WC, I thought you might not have read my first post closely

The first post wasn't really very clear - "I presently connect the RCA cables from the turntable to the RCA input plugs on the ARTcessories USBPhonoPlus v2" is a much better description than "I use an ARTcessories gismo" "

somehow the PhonoPlus does not work with Vista and its Sigma Tel sound card

I think there is some confusion here. In order to get sound into a computer, there must be an "audio device" to convert the analogue audio signal into digital data that your computer understands. One such audio device would be a sound card, such as a Sigmatel on-board sound-card. Another example of an audio device is your ARTcessories USBPhonoPlus v2. The PhonoPlus is basically an external USB sound card with a phono pre-amp built in.

Without using fancy ASIO drivers and such like your computer will work with just one audio device at a time (ASIO drivers are not supported by Audacity, so we are just looking at Windows drivers to control the audio devices). When the PhonoPlus is not connected, your computer will use the Sigmatel audio device. When the PhonPlus IS connected, the computer will drop the Sigmatel and connect to the PhonoPlus as its audio device.

As you mentioned with the link, several people have had problems with the Sigmatel chip, particularly with Vista, however, when you connect the PhonoPlus, this becomes irrelevant because your computer will stop using the Sigmatel, and will use the PhonoPlus instead (unless you go into the Windows Control Panel and tell it otherwise).

Now that you've told us what kind of gizmo you've got, Google offers up the answer:

One thing to be aware of... when this device is connected to a Vista machine, Vista will certainly recognize it as a USB audio input device, but will likely classify it as a microphone! If Vista does this, it will end up in MONO mode. You'll need to go into the settings for the device via the Sound control panel and change it to stereo, 16-bit, 44kHz.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R17KYYTL0IQUE8

[George22]

WC, I thought you might not have read my first post closely

The first post wasn't really very clear - "I presently connect the RCA cables from the turntable to the RCA input plugs on the ARTcessories USBPhonoPlus v2" is a much better description than "I use an ARTcessories gismo" "

Thanks for the info. And, yes, the first of these two descriptions is clearer than the second, but if you are going to laugh at the second ("I use an ARTcessories gismo" "), you might at least have the decency to cite it in full: "I use an ARTcessories gismo to change from analog to digital sound in recording LP's." The full sentence gives a much better idea of what the gizmo is and does than does your abbreviation of it, and therefore your quip: "Now that you've told us what kind of gizmo you've got" is somewhat unfair. I thank you for the useful info, but I consider you to be a fool.