Audacity Forum

Hey everyone, I am trying to record my Roland TD9 e-drum using Audacity on my computer but the result of the recording seems to very distorted/static-ish (not sure how to describe the sound..basically it was horrible).

I've watch some tutorials on Youtube and read up a bit regarding the recording process. Here's what I did.

I used a 1/4" to 1/8" converter from my drum module to a spliter (1/8" to 2 1/8" F). From the spliter, I plugged one with my headphone while the other is directly to the microphone input of my computer. I hit record, played the drum a little, and got terrible sounds.

I'm not sure what I did wrong or missed but if I would really appreciate any help for I'm really a newbie when it comes to things like this.

I didn't use any mixer because I don't want to spend much and also I don't have a dedicated sound card in my computer (only the one that comes with the graphic card?). Just listing it here in case the information is important.

leptrx wrote:I used a 1/4" to 1/8" converter from my drum module to a spliter (1/8" to 2 1/8" F). From the spliter, I plugged one with my headphone while the other is directly to the microphone input of my computer.

I expect that is the problem.
Assuming that the output from the drum machine is about "line level", that's a peak level of about 1 volt.
Assuming that your microphone input is a "microphone" input, it is expecting an input of about 0.001 volts.
That means that the signal that you are feeding into the mic input is about 1000 times too big, which will cause "distortion".

If your computer has a "line level input", try using that.
If it doesn't, you may need to invest in a sound card that does (an inexpensive option is a Behringer UCA 202 at about $30)

I believe the line level input that you mentioned is the one with the blue color input? I tried plugging it in but it doesn't catch anything even though I raised all the recording volume to the max.

Also in the previous case, the sound started to sound horrible when I hit the toms and the bass. The cymbals and snare sounded okay actually.

Yes, the light blue one.
Check in the Windows Sound Control Panel and ensure that it is enabled.