Audacity Forum

Am having a problem with low volume in new laptop. My question is: When I right click the speaker icon in the sys tray next to date / time it is labeled volume mixer, I see 4 areas: Speakers and headphones, system sounds, Audacity and Mozilla Firefox. The volume sliders are all set to max. When recording the small volume indicator shows music in the speakers and headphones area, and in the Firefox area, but not in the Audacity or system sound areas - should I see music activity in the Audacity area?

Using 1.3.13, System 7 home premium, HP dv6-6033cls laptop.

Moderator note: moved to correct Windows Forum because this is Windows 7 specific

Johnnovice wrote:Am having a problem with low volume in new laptop. My question is: When I right click the speaker icon in the sys tray next to date / time it is labeled volume mixer, I see 4 areas: Speakers and headphones, system sounds, Audacity and Mozilla Firefox. The volume sliders are all set to max. When recording the small volume indicator shows music in the speakers and headphones area, and in the Firefox area, but not in the Audacity or system sound areas - should I see music activity in the Audacity area?

No. The volume mixer contains only output sliders and meters, not recording meters. If you had Transport > Software Playthrough enabled in Audacity, so that the recording was sent to the output, then you would see activity in the Audacity meter in volume mixer, but you must not enable playthrough when recording computer playback because it could damage your speakers or headphones.

Have you tried turning up the volume in the player in Firefox?


Gale

All the volume sliders are at max: firefox, audacity, all the control panel sliders. Can't get the volume above 0.50 (usually 0.25) in the audacity waveform tracks. Went to Costco (were I bought the laptop) with a cd to determine if a store model would be louder or not. When I play the same cd in my laptop the volume appears to my ears to be the same if I set the volume sliders to identical levels as my laptop. This leads me to believe it is something unique to audacity, or something wrong with my laptop when only recording. My next step is to reinstall audacity.

Johnnovice wrote:All the volume sliders are at max: firefox, audacity, all the control panel sliders.

Including the Audacity input slider and the system input slider ("Recording" tab of "Sound")?

Johnnovice wrote:Can't get the volume above 0.50 (usually 0.25) in the audacity waveform tracks.

Actually, 0.5 (-6 dB) is the recommended peak level for most cases. I would personally set it higher than that for classical music, given much of it is often quiet, but 0.5 is reasonable.

Johnnovice wrote:Went to Costco (were I bought the laptop) with a cd to determine if a store model would be louder or not. When I play the same cd in my laptop the volume appears to my ears to be the same if I set the volume sliders to identical levels as my laptop. This leads me to believe it is something unique to audacity, or something wrong with my laptop when only recording. My next step is to reinstall audacity.

Once again, make sure the input levels are turned up. Make sure you are actually choosing stereo mix or similar as the input device in Device Toolbar, and not the internal microphone.

Reinstalling Audacity is in 99% of cases a complete waste of time, because the Audacity preferences persist after re-installation. To reset the audacity.cfg settings file, see:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audac ... reset_beta


Gale

In my sys 7 home premium the stereo mixer is labeled volume mixer. All sliders are maxed. Muting or allowing microphone volume has no effect. In audacity the wave forms are at .25 unless the song screaming insanely loud, then it sometimes touches 0.5. I have recorded songs with audacity with my previous laptop and saved them. The waveforms are all around 0.5 and sometimes run to .75. When I record the same songs from the same sources with the new laptop the waveforms are all .25 and almost never touch .5. I never maxed the volume sliders with the old laptop - usually set around 40 to 70 depending upon source (also classical vs pop). The only real difference between the laptops is the sys (7 vs vista) and this laptop has "beats audio", which is supposed to be an improvement from my old laptop. I'm stumped.

Johnnovice wrote:In my sys 7 home premium the stereo mixer is labeled volume mixer.

I doubt that very much. By "stereo mix" I mean the name of an input device that is designed for recording computer playback. It may also be called "what U Hear", "Sum", "Wave out" or something else, or you computer sound device may not even have such an option. At the moment I suspect you are recording computer playback from the inbuilt microphone, which as well as possibly giving low volume will give you poor quality.

When you right-click over the speaker icon, instead of choosing "Volume Mixer", choose "Recording Devices". This brings you here to "Sound" in the Windows Control Panel:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Mixer ... es#vistacp

Please click that link above and follow the instructions to show all the disabled and disconnected devices and then enable them. If you see a device meant for recording computer playback (like the names I gave), right-click over it and make it default device. Right-click over it again, choose "Properties" then click the "Levels" tab. On the "Levels" tab, turn the volume slider up and make sure it is not muted. Click OK to close all those windows.

Then in Audacity click Transport > Rescan Audio Devices. In Device Toolbar, click to right of the microphone symbol and choose the device you made default in the paragraph above. Now try to record.

If you don't have success, open Recording Devices again from the speaker icon. Do ALT + PrtScr to copy an image of it, open Paint, paste the image and save it as a PNG image. Use the "Upload attachment" tab underneath where you post your replies to attach the image.



Gale

Solved.

The laptop was defective! Took CD to Costco (where I bought laptop in July) and played it on a floor model - was much louder. Since I was within the 3 month return period they suggested I just swap it out. I did and the new laptop is just like my 5 year old laptop that died (drowned actually), and Audacity works great now. Talked to the Costco concierge service and they said it was just a very strange problem since it affected the speakers and ear buds equally. They said usually it is either the ear buds or the speakers.

Thanks for your tenacity and research, hope to return the favor in the future.

PS: apparently the HP dv6-xxxx models have a history of audio issues, mostly software issues, as there are lots of people asking for help with them on the net.