Audacity Forum

Hello to everyone!

I've been using Audacity for a while now, but I can't really say I've become an expert. I know how to do some basic things, in particular, recording audio straight from my computer. For example: I record a song from YouTube using Audacity. I noticed that when I play the song in Audacity (or after converting to mp3) that the sound is very low. No problem there, since I can up the volume in Audacity before converting it to mp3. With some songs I can increase the db by 18, but with others it produces a loss of sound quality. So I increase it with 6 or 12, until the volume and sound quality are in balance.
Now, my question is the following: is there a way to increase the sound quality while (or after) recording audio straight from YouTube (or any other source that comes straight from my PC)? If not, are there other freeware programs I could use which would increase the sound quality from any kind of audio recorded from YouTube? I read Kristal is better suited for recording from the internet, but I doubt that there will be much difference in sound quality compared to Audacity.

If anybody could help me (as soon as possible), I greatly appreciate it.

The recording volume is set by your computer sound system, not by Audacity (although on some computers the mixer toolbar in Audacity can send requests to the sound card driver to tell it to increase/decrease the recording/playback level - however, it is still the sound card driver that actually makes the adjustments.)

You need to go into the sound cards control panel/mixer application in order to adjust the recording volume. This is usually accessed through a loudspeaker icon in the system tray near to the system clock. Note that when recording "Stereo Mix", both playback and recording settings will usually effect the recording level that is being sent to Audacity (because you are recording the sounds that are being played).

Thank you very much for your help!
I'll give it a try.