Why is my playback noise so low????

[heyman]

Hi,

I am a newbie, don't know many audio/sound terms but wondering if you could help me out. I got a new Acer desktop about two weeks ago. It currently has Vista on it. When I plug in my mic, and for example, I just speak into it. The sound recorded is VERY soft. I have to yell into it in order for it to be loud. This never happended with my old computer (XP btw if that has anything to do with it). It was acutally the opposite. Anything I said was picked up into the mic, even things I whispered 3 feet away were picked up. I've googled and looked at all the FAQs but I can't figure out what to do. Help!

[waxcylinder]

The level delivered to Audacity is controlled by your windows sound services (unless one uses a USB device in which case Audacity hands control of the sound services over to the SB device). You can get a the sound services thhrough the Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices - or your soundcard driver software may provide a separate application to control the sound services (the Realtek on my Dell laptop does this with Realtek HD Audio Manager)

Since you have just moved from XP to Vista you may find some useful information on this Wiki page: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... s_Vista_OS

WC

[heyman]

My computer uses Realtek HD Audio Manager too. Are there any controls there that would help? Under the "frontmic" tab, I already put recording volume to max. Would microphone boost help? I tried heightning it, but nothing happened except make the playback sound way fuzzier.

[whitecrow34]

Heyman. I have the same problem. I used Audacity with xp with a mic to record guitar and it worked fine. Now I have Vista...I can't get it to pick up hardly anything now. Like you said if i scream into the mic then it will pick it up. All the input and volume levels are at max. When I do get something to record i have to amplify it, and it is all fuzzy and has a distorted sound to it. Sounds like a flanger effect on guitar. I've been trying to fix this problem over a year. If you fix it let us know. Thanks.

[peadee]

I have just fixed my problem. Problem is, I don't know what I did. I went into device manager and changed a couple of setting and also changed something in Audacity itself. I will have a go at doing it again and if I am successful I will post the results on here. I have a Packard Bell PC with a Realtek card and a Labtech mic and couln't get any playback volume, now I can but I can't use the effects menu, all the options are greyed out. Any suggestions?

Peadee

[heyman]

Please figure it out ASAP pedadee. I'm going crazy over this!!

[steve]

Please figure it out ASAP pedadee. I'm going crazy over this!!

Check out the link that waxcylinder posted, and also here: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... bar_Issues

now I can but I can't use the effects menu, all the options are greyed out.

You must have some audio selected before the effects are available.
Ctrl+A selects all tracks.