Audacity Forum

I'm starting to wish ill on this computer. My last topic was "hey sound quality is garbage" and an awesome guy said "hey soundcard?" Unfortunately we still haven't gotten this fixed as everyone is somehow convinced this is as advanced a soundcard my comp. can take.
So after fiddling around a bunch with sound settings everywhere, we got the bass to sound like a bass, and the keyboard to sound like a keyboard - even better than the old computer, even. This is a Great Thing.
Though the volume changes itself sometimes during recording, which is a little disconcerting.

This was from making the line-in great. I don't think I could remember the steps off-hand, though. Recording drums is the next step, but since we can't use line-in, I tried it with my cheap mic. It still sounded like the same garbage 'wet plates in phase shift' from before, but after about a minute of recording, the sound cut out completely! Nothing else for the rest of the three - four minutes was picked up, and it was instead replaced with scarce blips of white noise that last a millisecond.

Is this still the soundcard, or is my computer secretly Christine?

<<<is my computer secretly Christine?>>>

Multiple problems can make a computer simulate Christine.

<<<Though the volume changes itself sometimes during recording,>>>

That can be your computer trying to "help you" at the wrong time. The Grand Theory Of Everything states that Windows PCs were designed for corporate communications and Macs were designed for artistic production. So you're mixing music on a telephone.

One of the downsides of that can be that the PC is trying to perform echo cancellation and auto voice leveling on your show, naturally assuming that you're wearing a tasteful suit and trying to call the corporate offices in Denver with Vonage or Skype. Since you're not, it might be good to go through your Windows preferences looking for settings with those magic words.

The other Helpful Hint from Heloise is Windex and a paper towel. Unplug your cables and connectors and scrub all the male plugs with a towel moistened in Windex. Plug it in and out a couple of times, pull it out and clean it again. I can do amazing things to a ratty sound system with this trick. Each time you plug in a 3.5mm or 6.3mm plug, rotate it a couple of times to insure good connection.

If you can get the failures down to one serious one, then we can solve that relatively easily--or at least figure out what broke.

Koz