Audacity Forum

I find that when recording from my reel-to-reel tape deck to Audacity in Windows-7, I cannot adjust the input volume using the Audacity input volume slider without it changing my WIn-7;Control Panel; Sound; Line In properties; Levels. And, this happens vice versa . If I have Audacity and Control Panel open at the same time, I can see one change as I change the other. Is this normal?

The Audacity tutorials say that if the Aud. Input level is set very low, I may get unnatural sound. But, I have to have it set at no higher than 0.1 or I get clipping. This puts the Windows input vol. at 5. Am I doing something incorrectly?

BTW, the Audacity Line In slider is set to "Master". The drop down menu on it has no other options.

Thanks,
Richard

It's normal. On some computers, the link fails and we start to get complaints about volume sliders that are gray and do nothing. We keep insisting that Audacity is a complete slave to the computer that's running it. If the computer fails to provide some service or tool to Audacity, Audacity just doesn't get it. That's the end of the story.

If you're using the Broadcast Output of your tape machine, then yes, the signal will be very robust and high volume. Computer Line-In connections are HiFi standard which isn't as hot, but it should be within adjustment range.

You should not have blue waves that reach all the way to "1" either direction, and you should not have bouncing light sound meters that hit "0." Those both cause permanent, fatal distortion.

Koz

Thank you Koz,
So, I will keep my Win-7 volume set at 5 and Audacity Input slider at 0.1, as this prevents "blue waves that reach all the way to "1" either direction, and ... bouncing light sound meters that hit "0." "

Any idea why if I close the WIn-7 Sound window, the sound quits and there is no input to Audacity?
Also, in the WIn-7 Sound window there are bouncing green sound bars in BOTH "Line-In" and "Stereo Mix". There is a check mark in the "Line-In". Should I disable Stereo Mix>

And, I sure would appreciate knowing whether or not using Noise Removal makes sense for me. THese are reel-to-reel tapes of LP phonograph records. There are two types of noise: the tape deck hum and the turn table. I tried noise removal with the defaults and did not like the results. I read the Audacity notes and then changed the smoothing sliders to their center positions and lowered amount to 10 dB: (Noise Reduction 10dB; Frequency Smoothing 500 Hz; Attach/decay Time 0.5 sec. ).
This seemed better. Might you have a suggestion?
I am also normalizing each file. Is this a good move?

Thank you so much for your interest in helping me,
Richard

rorser wrote:
And, I sure would appreciate knowing whether or not using Noise Removal makes sense for me. THese are reel-to-reel tapes of LP phonograph records. There are two types of noise: the tape deck hum and the turn table. I tried noise removal with the defaults and did not like the results. I read the Audacity notes and then changed the smoothing sliders to their center positions and lowered amount to 10 dB: (Noise Reduction 10dB; Frequency Smoothing 500 Hz; Attach/decay Time 0.5 sec. ).
This seemed better. Might you have a suggestion?
I am also normalizing each file. Is this a good move?

Noise removal almost certainly makes sense to remove the high frequency tape hiss present on all tape recordings.

Use fade out, fade in, generate silence, and delete to edit the gaps at the tape beginning, tape end, and gaps between songs.

I'm not sure what the defaults are in noise removal. I typically use 12 DB, 150 smoothing, and .15 attack. I've found it VERY difficult to detect differences in slider positions for smoothing and attack, but the DB setting makes a clearcut difference, as you can find out with experimentation.

Turntable rumble can be attacked with a high pass filter setting that allows everything above 50 or 100 hz to pass through.

Hum can be attacked with a notch filter to attack the particular frequency of the hum.

You might find Brian Davies' "DeNoiseLF" application useful for rumble and hum, but I find Audacity is very good for standard "hiss" and general cleanup.

You might prefer amplify to normalize. My understanding is that normalize sets both stereo channels to the same level, while amplify does not. If you have a quiet passage in the left channel and a simultaneous loud signal in the right channel, you might not like normalize in that case because it would bring the left channel way up and might not sound faithful to the original.

If your original LP records were not pristine, your reel copies may have clicks and pops. Audacity can remove clicks and pops, but only manually, which is very tedious. Brian Davies "ClickRepair" does a pretty good automated job and has a lot of flexibility.

Thank you very much Ignatz for taking the time to respond so thoroughly to my questions.
If you get a chance and can afford the time, take a look at my workflow post here in the same section of the forum, and let me know what you think.
I will start applying your suggestions immediately. I have not been doing the high pass filter, but that is a great idea, as I do have t table rumble.
Gratefully, Richard