volume automatically lowers while recording

[onesmalldrop]

hello! my name is sam; I'm new here. I'm having an odd problem recording in Audacity and would be grateful for any tips. What happens is that, while I am recording, the volume is clearly lowering itself independently:



I was playing at a consistent volume all the way through, but for some reason, the recording volume is automatically going down, I assume to prevent the levels from maxing out. But I don't mind the levels maxing out; in fact I want them to, but I can't figure out how to stop the program from doing this.

This happens in both Audacity 1.2.x and 1.3.x. My setup is that I am playing a guitar through an amp, and the amp's output is going straight into to my laptop's microphone jack.

Here is a WAV file of the recording pictured above. I played a G chord at the same volume ten times in a row; you can clearly hear the volume levels lowering themselves:
http://www.mediafire.com/?fxx37q9kbt2i7yf

thanks for reading, any help would be hugely appreciated!

EDIT: I have tried skipping the amp and plugging the guitar straight into the mic jack; the result is the same.

[kozikowski]

You can't plug your amp into the Mic jack. Some people manage to pull that off, but not many. The two are not compatible with each other. Use a UCA-202 (or similar) instead. The amp out is "line level" and so is the UCA-202.

Turn Video Conferencing services off in your computer to get rid of that Auto Volume Control.

Windows Enhanced Sound
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 79&start=0

Koz

[onesmalldrop]

thanks! had to explore a little to figure out how to do it in XP but found it in the end. problem solved!