Poor audio quality recording whatuhear

[Raze]

I'm trying to record a mix of some songs that I have using audacity and I finally got it to start recording what my speakers play. The problem is it kills the quality of the music. I'm using Realtek audio HD sound manager, and when I start recording instead of the blue sound waves spiking like normal, they form a giant blue rectangle along with the sound. It plays back the same thing I'm recording, but really poor quality. Changing the input volume doesn't help, just lowers the volume with the same poor quality. Any ideas how I can fix this?

[Raze]

After fiddling around with Windows sound recorder I learned this is a problem with my audio, not audacity, but still want to know how I can fix this.

[steve]

I'm trying to record a mix of some songs that I have using audacity

What are you recording from? A tape player? A record player? A CD player? Streaming video?.....

What recording input are you using? Microphone input? Line input? ...

[kozikowski]

"What You Hear" is a little magic. A PC will cheerfully send you What You Hear in addition to the original sound channel, and other channels giving you all sorts of echoes, phasing, and flanging problems.

And yes, you do have to give us a hint.

Koz