Background recording noise

[tseepe]

Hi,

I have a problem with background noise when i'm recording. I use CDJs and a USB sound card to record onto my laptop. The noise is so bad during recording, it goes upto -18db. I have been trying to solve this issue, but haven't succeeded so far. Please help me out.

[steve]

Are you sure that you are really recording directly from the USB sound card and not just picking up the sound from a built-in microphone?
The input device in the Device Toolbar needs to be set to your USB sound card.

What sort of USB sound card is it?
What sort of noise?

[tseepe]

Are you sure that you are really recording directly from the USB sound card and not just picking up the sound from a built-in microphone?
The input device in the Device Toolbar needs to be set to your USB sound card.

What sort of USB sound card is it?
What sort of noise?

Hi Steve,

I'm using a ST-Lab M-330 7.1 Channel USB Sound Box on Windows Vista. I always ensure that the Input Device selection on Audacity is on the USB sound card's Line-in. The moment I adjust the input volume slider to 0.1, the noise level immediately jumps to -18 to -24 db before pressing the play button on the CD player. Where might the noise be coming from and why is it so huge?

[steve]

I'm not sure that I'll be able to help you. It sounds like it may be a problem with the ST-Lab M-330 but I can't even find it listed on the ST-Lab web site. Did you get any instructions and/or a driver disk with the device? Which version of Windows are you using?

[tseepe]

I'm using Windows Vista. I did receive a driver CD and I installed the files as per the manual. The sound card can be found here: http://www.st-lab.com/products.asp.

[steve]

The sound card can be found here:

OK, found the manual, but it does not say much.

The moment I adjust the input volume slider to 0.1

Which input volume slider do you mean? The one in Audacity?

have you tried recording? What happens when you try to record a signal? Do you get a full scale (0 dB) signal that is horribly distorted?

[tseepe]

I'm referring to the slider in Audacity. I have done few recordings setting the input level at -12 to -6 db, but the noise is just horrible. The noise is so bad it can be heard throughout the recordings when I play them....

[steve]

On Vista (and Windows 7) you probably need to set the recording level in the Windows Control Panel.
It is a common problem on these operating systems that the recording level in the Windows Control Panel needs to be set very low (around 0.1).
I don't use either of these operating systems myself, but there is some information about this here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... _Windows_7