What sounds like phase modulation...

[jrupert]

Please excuse me as I am new to Audacity, but not to recording. That being said, when I used to work as a professional musician, we were dumping reel-to-reel to DAT media. Anyway, I have been very impressed with the range of functions that Audacity has. However, when I record and playback, my playback sounds like I recorded it with a phaser. It does not sound that way when monitoring the recording. My setup: I have my guitar mic'd up, going into a Mackie board, coming out of the tape out, going into the mic input on my laptop. I do not have a line-in on my laptop. Could this be the problem?

Thank you for the help

Jeff

[steve]

going into the mic input on my laptop

not good
Mic inputs on typical PC laptops are generally low quality. A mic signal is about 1000x lower than "line level" so there's also a big mismatch, and mic inputs are often mono.
Also, Windows often has "enhancements" enabled by default that will mess up the recording.

If you disable all of the enhancements then you may get something that is vaguely usable: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/FAQ: ... hancements

However, I'd recommend that you get a better quality sound card. For laptops, the Behringer UCA202 is an inexpensive option.