Recording stops in 1 to 10 seconds

[slhansen]

When I try to record from a CD/cassette player, Audacity stops recording in 1 to 10 seconds. The recording is fine and I can play it on I-tunes and it is MP3, but I cannot record a whole track, only the first seconds of it.

[steve]

How is the CD/cassette player connected to your computer?
All other details about your set-up would be useful.

[slhansen]

Thank you, Steve. I have a Toshiba laptop with Vista. I don't think I have a separate sound card, but I don't know where it would be, if I do. I looked at the CPU while the audacity was recording and it was 89%. I have a Sony CD player which has a cassette player also. It is connected by a stereo aux cable, 1.8 m, at each end, one end into the earphone input of the player, the other into the mic input of the computer. After I posted last night, I did record 8 minutes of a cassette tape, which was the entire end of the tape, successfully. Audacity did not stop. I don't know why it worked. I will try again,now, to record a full tape. Also, I have a lot of machine noise, when there is no music, like at brief pauses. The music seems to cover up this machine noise. I've seen where you can edit out noise. Should I try that or will it edit out some of the music in the same frequency?
Thanks,
Lee

[steve]

How big is your C: drive and how much free hard disk space do you have on your C: drive?
Have you defragmented the drive recently? If not it would be a good idea to defragment it.

The "machine noise" may be caused by the power supply - Laptop PCs are notorious for this - the only real solution to that problem that I know of is to run from batteries.
PC laptop sound cards are often pretty poor quality - I use a cheap Behringer UCA 202 USB sound card with my laptop and the recording quality is vastly better than the internal sound card.

[slhansen]

Thank you, Steve. Are you saying (in my language!!!) that I should unpug my Laptop when I am using audacity, so that the hum sound will be less? Also are you saying that I should purchase a sound card?
Thanks,
Lee

[steve]

Are you saying (in my language!!!) that I should unpug my Laptop when I am using audacity, so that the hum sound will be less?

I'm saying that you should try that and see (hear) if it makes a significant improvement. Of course if you're recording when running from batteries you will need to keep an eye on the amount of charge remaining in the batteries to avoid a flat battery at an inopportune moment.

are you saying that I should purchase a sound card?

There's a lot things that can contribute to bad sound quality, but if the sound card is low quality then you will never get good sound quality from it. If you could post a short sample of a recording (just a few seconds) that includes fairly loud sound and "silence", then we can have a listen and may be able to tell if it's likely to be due to the sound card.