Re: Audacity and Media Player on Windows 7 notebooks
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 9:19 am
Thanks Koz, that explains a lot about sources of noise and clipping that are hard to 'engineer out' of a usb card for $40.
I finally understand why there is no simple fix to make the meter clipping alerts fool-proof. Gale must be saying "at last!". Even View > Clipping will be unreliable if users have mismatched signal levels and sound card hardware enough to cause clipping somewhere below the 0 dB level, before the signal is fed to Audacity. But once understood the most likely causes should be fairly easily avoided by users (don't be tempted to push line level outputs into a mic input, even at 0 on the record level slider, there will probably be unwanted clipping even if there is not gross distortion).
After your lesson, we all want ART USB Dual Pre (or Phono v2) devices with 2 or 3 separate power sources, variable gain, metal case etc for $200 (and an SSD in the computer). Even those sometimes pick up hum from too-close usb hubs or power supplies, but the engineering quality justifies the price.
Then again, people who mainly want to transfer their LPs into MP3 files to play through equipment like a car stereo might hesitate at the cost; and struggle to hear '5 times the sound quality' for their investment.
With the explanations (from you and WC, STF and GA above) of where the problems can arise when using cheaper 'consumer' gear like the iMic, many of the pitfalls can be avoided or at least minimized for those on a stricter budget. Hopefully the much-revised initial post helps them get up to reasonable quality recordings quickly.
A long time ago I gladly paid several $1000 for a Nakamichi 700TT and Phase Linear Autocorrelator chasing quality portable recordings (on cassette tapes). Today with a little caution (and 2 pages of instructions?) anyone can do much better using Audacity, a netbook, an iMic and a memory stick. Better still with more expensive sound cards.
Much obliged, RGB
I finally understand why there is no simple fix to make the meter clipping alerts fool-proof. Gale must be saying "at last!". Even View > Clipping will be unreliable if users have mismatched signal levels and sound card hardware enough to cause clipping somewhere below the 0 dB level, before the signal is fed to Audacity. But once understood the most likely causes should be fairly easily avoided by users (don't be tempted to push line level outputs into a mic input, even at 0 on the record level slider, there will probably be unwanted clipping even if there is not gross distortion).
After your lesson, we all want ART USB Dual Pre (or Phono v2) devices with 2 or 3 separate power sources, variable gain, metal case etc for $200 (and an SSD in the computer). Even those sometimes pick up hum from too-close usb hubs or power supplies, but the engineering quality justifies the price.
Then again, people who mainly want to transfer their LPs into MP3 files to play through equipment like a car stereo might hesitate at the cost; and struggle to hear '5 times the sound quality' for their investment.
With the explanations (from you and WC, STF and GA above) of where the problems can arise when using cheaper 'consumer' gear like the iMic, many of the pitfalls can be avoided or at least minimized for those on a stricter budget. Hopefully the much-revised initial post helps them get up to reasonable quality recordings quickly.
A long time ago I gladly paid several $1000 for a Nakamichi 700TT and Phase Linear Autocorrelator chasing quality portable recordings (on cassette tapes). Today with a little caution (and 2 pages of instructions?) anyone can do much better using Audacity, a netbook, an iMic and a memory stick. Better still with more expensive sound cards.
Much obliged, RGB