Cannot record properly

[h3llfir3]

When i record from internet streaming, the song does not play back clearly.. any ideas? it sounds sort of like a faint hiss in whatever i record..

[billw58]

How are you recording the internet stream? What computer and OS are you using? What version of Audacity?

-- Bill

[billw58]

h3llfir3 PM'd me:

Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit
AMD Athalon X2 64
recording from youtube and shoutcast radio
Audacity version 1.2.6

OK, so now we know. I will leave this to the Windows elves.

-- Bill

[h3llfir3]

so are you going to tell me what to do now?

[kozikowski]

<<<it sounds sort of like a faint hiss in whatever i record..>>>

The whole show turns into a faint hiss, or there is a faint hiss behind all the portions of the show which are otherwise clear?

<<<so are you going to tell me what to do now?>>>

Probably not. We're the wrong two elves for that.

When you record, do you get the red recording meters in Audacity bouncing almost but not quite to maximum? Something like this...

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_record.jpg

Koz

[h3llfir3]

<<<it sounds sort of like a faint hiss in whatever i record..>>>

The whole show turns into a faint hiss, or there is a faint hiss behind all the portions of the show which are otherwise clear?

<<<so are you going to tell me what to do now?>>>

Probably not. We're the wrong two elves for that.

When you record, do you get the red recording meters in Audacity bouncing almost but not quite to maximum? Something like this...

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_record.jpg

Koz

there is a faint hiss behind all the portions of the show and yes the bars are in the red would it help if i sent you a clip of how it sounds?

[steve]

I also get a background hiss when I record anything using the on-board sound card on my laptop (and it's not particularly faint). This is not a fault in Audacity, it is because my laptop sound card is rubbish. To get high quality clean recordings I use a Behringer UCA 202 USB sound card - it's only a cheap USB sound card but the recordings are hugely better than with the on-board device. Mac computers have built in sound cards that are considerably better - one of the reasons that they cost 2 - 3 x the price of a PC.

[Janoschka]

I recorded from cd player in my laptop to Audacity. Noisy and unhearable. Why?

[steve]

I recorded from cd player in my laptop to Audacity. Noisy and unhearable. Why?

Use a CD ripper instead. http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

[waxcylinder]

Use a CD ripper instead. http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

Not always possible ...

If your CD has ridiculous DRM (Digital Rights Management) encoding - then it won't play in a PC nor can it be ripped with a CD ripper.

One of my CDs was like that, I only discovered long after I'd bought it when I tried to rip it into my iTunes library. I got around it by connecting my CD deck to my soundcard/PC, playing the CD and recording with Audacity (analogous to transcibing vinyl LPs). I then made a non-DRM encoded CD from the WAV files that I made - this loaded fine into iTunes (and was even recognized by the Gracenote CDDB database - so all the metadata was neatly supplied).

But yes, Steve is right - generally it is much better - and easier - to rip the CD to a set of WAV files.

WC