I have a problem like yours: recording a cassette via RGA dual cable into the micro jack, I can’t control the input volume. I tried with OS system regulation, but got same distortion and clipping with no sound reduction. I have notebook sony vaio VPCF1 with Realtek sound card. Cassette player is an old Toshiba deck PC-G10. Can you help me?
I split this out from a topic about recording from a USB turntable as the cause of the problem is different.
Microphone ports are usually mono and are meant for quiet signals from a microphone which the mic port then amplifies strongly.
You want to connect to the blue line-in port, or see if there is a control in the sound card to switch the mic port to line level.
If the system slider does not give you level reduction, record from the headphones of the tape deck and turn down the output.
Otherwise you need a USB interface with a line level input like one of these:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Recommended_sound_devices#USB_Interfaces .
Gale
Thanks for the quick answer. I solved using a portable cassette recorder connecting the mic stereo input of the pc to the hearphones output of the recorder. Quality reasonable. I will investigate the local Behringer dealer for the U-Control UCA202. Hal