Can't Get Input Levels Down

[Green Lantern]

Greetings

I am a new user, love the potential that Audacity might offer. I have a bunch of material on cassette tapes that I am trying to "rescue" for posterity. I have set everything up between the player and my HP Elitebook Notebook. I am able to record but the levels are so high that the recordings are seriously impacted. The levels are nearly constantly out the top. I have a microphone jack on my notebook which apparently doubles as the "line in". This is the source that I chose for recordings. I tried all the bells and whistles on Audacity to lower the levels but to no avail. Lowering the volume of the player also does nothing.

Any of you grey eminences out there have a clue for me?

Thanks.

GL

[waxcylinder]

You're a candidate for one of the external soundcards that we know work well on Audacity - see: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9477

My personal recommendation would be to go for the Edirol UA-1EX / Cakewalk UA-1G as they have a gain control to manage the level of the input signal - the cheaper (but good) Behringer UCA202 does not have such a control. From the description of your problem it sounds like you need a gain control on the device.

WC

[Green Lantern]

Greetings Waxcylinder and thanks for the quick response! I had similar thoughts and pulled out my Edirol UA-5 which is a bit of a dinosaur but stood me in good stead in the past. The quality of the original recordings doesn't really justify and external card, which is why I tried to go direct. Alas though, the inputs for the Edirol are all "guitar jack" size or RCA and I don't have the right cables just now. Will have to handle that, but I feel certain your suggestion is correct. Thanks again.

GL

[waxcylinder]

From what I can see of the UA5 on t'interweb it looks as though it should do a good job for what you are trying to do. Looks like a nice bit of kit.

Even though your original recordings may not be the best - I'd still go for a good external soundcard over a poor internal one any time. So go get the necessay cabling ...

If you do get that UA5 to work ok with Audacity perhaps you could post your feedback here - or better still post a report in the sticky thread I pointed you at in my previous post.

The only issue you may face is the ASIO interface - Audacity cannot be distributed with ASIO (for IP licensing reasons) but it is possible to compile/build a personal version of Audacity with ASIO if you have the skills. My UA-1EX has the ability to run in non ASIO "Standard mode" of "Advanced mode" which is ASIO, It worked fine in standard mode for a while - recently to do some Audacity testing I downloaded the Edirol drivers and switched the device to "Advanced mod" where it is still working fine on my standard 1.3.12 Audcaity (with no ASIO support built in). So a bit of experimentation may be needed - up-to-date drivers from the Edirol website (see: http://www.roland.com/products/en/_supp ... ODUCT=UA-5 ) may help too.

WC

[Green Lantern]

Sure thing.

Thanks.

GL