Recording volume goes up and down...

[AK907]

I have Windows 7 and I downloaded Audacity 1.3 Beta and whenever I record something the volume starts out really loud and then goes down after a second or two. Then the volume goes up and down every few seconds while recording. Any ideas what might be causing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[steve]

Topic moved to the Audacity 1.3.x part of the forum.

By default Windows will usually set up the microphone for conferencing/voip/Skype type applications and will enable echo cancellation, noise cancellation and other such "enhancements". While these may be useful for Sype, etc. they cause the problem that you are experiencing when you want to make a recording. You need to find these settings (they may be in the "Sounds" section of the Windows Control Panel, or if your sound card has a dedicated control panel/mixer then the settings may be there). All such "enhancements" need to be disabled.