Strange "DC" problem. Need help....

[Ilan]

I just downloaded your fantastic software today and using it I discovered I have a problem with my Ubuntu machine.
(My XP machine works fine.)
There seems to be some sort of "DC" bias which is volume dependent.

Screenshot.png (90.7 KiB) Viewed 547 times

The up arrows show where I increased the volume and the down arrows where I decreased it.
Either I have a hardware problem, a driver problem, or (I'm hoping) that something isn't set correctly.
Can anyone give me a suggestion on what to try?
I've tried all the combinations of muting/unmuting things which I can think of.

The machine is an MSI laptop, running Ubuntu 8.04.

Thanks,
Ilan

[steve]

I think this problem is most likely a hardware problem.

You could try recording at a different bit depth (say 16 bit) to see if the sound card behaves any better (though I'd be surprised if it makes any difference. Other than that, I think it's either a new sound card (there are decent USB sound cards available from around $40 US), or record in 32 bit, keep the recording level low, then use "Normalize" from the effects menu to remove the DC offset.

[sekiran]

I have the same problem, but don't think its audacity related... I am on an hp notebook with a realtek HDA built in soundcard.

Its not audacity, because I get the same result in "ardour" in ubuntu studio. Its not hardware related because I still have a windows partition on this box, and audacity is dead-center there...

I also have a fedora on the box and also have the same problem there...

Have to conclude that its some kind of linux or driver issue with this chip.

Would appreciate hearing if you have had any luck fixing this... can't seem to find any other people with this problem, except for your posts on the MSI board....