Distortion in Recording

[ronerickson]

I am recording LP's to audacity by running my turntable through a Music Hall phono preamp and then output from that to the mic input on my laptop. Then I export my music into AIF files for iTunes use. These recordings sound very distorted. Almost like they were recorded in a tunnel or through some funking synthesizer. Hard to explain. I have tried recordings at 44.1 and 96. Any thoughts on where I am missing it? Thanks

[waxcylinder]

Unless you have a one of the "magic" mic inputs that is capable of switching between "line level" and "mic level" (and there are not many of those about) then you are overloading the input - th emic input is expecting a signal about 1,000 times smaller than the one you are presenting it with.

Instead you need to be plufgging into a "lin in" port on your PC - and if you don't have one of those then you will need one of the USB sound card devices - see: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9477

This set of tutorials from the manual should help you too: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Tuto ... iscs_to_CD

WC

[ronerickson]

Thanks that made all the difference in the world. I purchased the Cakewalk and it works very well.

[waxcylinder]

Glad the Cakewalk works well for you - I use its predecessor device the UA-1EX and it has prformed excellently for me.

WC