Need help - windows vista volume etc.

[MisterMarston]

Had audacity when i had a Windows XP pc, and (despite a fair bit of feedback) it all worked perfectly.

I had to recently upgrade to a Vista and im having real trouble. My microphone, when i try and play or sing into it comes up REALLY quiet in audacity, meaning i have to amplify or turn it up loads creating a hell of a lot of feedback. I think vista came with a thing called Realtek HD Audio Manager which i think might be the problem, it's too confusing and i think it's ballsing up my microphone.

Still if anyone can help or offer suggestions, i'd gladly appreciate it.

Thanks again.

[kozikowski]

Howling or screaming feedback is a closed loop, not one thing. Any time you have a speaker system and a microphone running close to each other with the same show, you can get feedback. The Big Kids always put headphones on a singing performer. Even that isn't foolproof, because some of the more deaf performers turn the headphones up so loud the sound comes out through their mouth through bone conduction in their head.

If you insist on struggling with the Windows Sound Control Panels, there are settings which control the show playback into the room and they're different from the settings that control the recording level for Audacity.

Windows Control Panel
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... trol_Panel

Go for the headphones.

Oh, if you didn't have enough problems, some newer Windows computers are missing the older microphone tools that let you increase the volume during the performance, so even after you solve the feedback problem (with headphones), you may still have a quiet recording.

Koz