recording from a dj mixer?

[ant_k]

Hi,

I am new on here. I was wondering if any one can help me with this. I am trying to record my DJ mixies from my mixer to audacity but am having a slight problem with the volume of the recording. My music records fine but seems a bit low in volume because when i compare the volume of the song that i have recorded to the volume of the same song just being played out of speakers it is low and the sound quality is very poor. I am recording using a usb soundcard which is coming from my booth output on my mixer to my usb drive on my computer. When i play my recordings back and convert them to mp3 to put on my ipod the volume is much lower then everything else on my ipod. Can anyone help me please? would be great to get some advice.

Thank you,

Ant k

[allencmcbride]

At the top of the screen toward the right is a slider next to a picture of a microphone; this is the input level slider. Have you tried sliding that up before recording? If not, try it; just make sure you don't slide it so high that the input level monitors (upper-middle of screen, next to the other mic icon) show clipping (red lines). Alternatively, your USB soundcard could be set to expect line-level input when you're giving it mic-level input. So if there's a switch on the soundcard for such a thing, you might try flipping it. --Allen

[rudeboy13]

you could always try turning the gain up on the track(just be careful to much will distort the sound) also if you right click your volume on the task bar in windows you can click recording devices, find the one your using, and change the input volume on it

[steve]

When you have finished all the recording, editing, mixing, processing and anything else that you are doing, but before you Export your finished masterpiece, you could use the "Amplify" effect to bring the level of the track up to the maximum possible level before distortion. Simply by selecting the completed mixed down track and bringing up "Amplify" from the Effects menu the maximum amount of amplification before clipping will automatically be selected. (Hint - if Amplify shows the maximum amplification amount without clipping is 0dB, then it is likely that you already have some clipping in your track).

Commercial recordings will often be louder than live recordings because producers tend to use a lot of dynamic compression to make the music sound louder, at the expense of reducing the dynamics (contrast between loud and quiet). See here for more information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Audacity 1.3 includes an effect called "leveller" that can be used to increase the "loudness" of a recording by dynamic compression. There are also several plug-in effects that can be used for the same purpose.