Speed issues between recording and playing

[hormekm]

I am a new user with recording from an EZCAP cassette player into USB port on Windows 8.1
It plays fine with earphones on the cassette but monitoring it on Audicity it plays extremely fast
When I export to a WAV file it is still fast
Why is it speeding up when recording
Thanks
Mike

[DVDdoug]

That shouldn't happen unless the hardware clock in the EZCAP is off or unless the drivers are not communicating the correct sample rate. (It's not unusual for the clock to be off by a little, but it shouldn't be "extremely off".)

Do you know if it records at 44.1kHz or 48kHz?

Before recording, go to Edit -> Preferences -> Quality and select a Default Sample Rate of 44100 Hz. In the lower-left part of the Audacity window you should see the same thing as your Project Rate. (Or if your user manual says the EZCAP uses 48kHz, change it to 48000).

...If everything is working correctly,changing the recording rate or the project rate shouldn't matter because the drivers will re-sample and it should "just work". But, if it's recording at 44.1kHz and (somehow) playing back at 48 or 96kHz, it will play fast (with the associated pitch increase).

on Audicity it plays extremely fast

How fast? i.e. If you've got a song that normally plays-back in 3 minutes, how long does the WAV file take?

It plays fine with earphones on the cassette but monitoring it on Audicity it plays extremely fast

Thanks for telling us that because we know the tape is playing at the right speed and it's not an analog problem.

FYI - "Monitoring" usually refers to listening while recording. And of course, if you're monitoring through Audacity while recording it can't play faster than the analog sound coming-in. But, I assume it plays too fast from within Audacity before exporting to WAV... And that would make sense, since something's apparently going wrong during recording.

[hormekm]

The user manual for the cassette player says to use a bit rate of 48000. I used the 48000 bit rate with 32 bit float. The recording sounds like Donald Duck. When I reduce it to 22500 it is significantly too slow, sounds like the cassette is dragging.
Apparantly the ideal rate is somewhere between 22500 and 48000. I don't see any capability to change the pre-set bit rate.
I purchased this product on EBAY . I may have to return it if I cant get it going. Incidentally I play it back from the music library using The Windows media player via WAV. Any ideas?
Mike

[steve]

Apparantly the ideal rate is somewhere between 22500 and 48000.

44100 ?

[Gale Andrews]

I used the 48000 bit rate with 32 bit float. The recording sounds like Donald Duck.

So we don't get confused, 48000 Hz is a sample rate - how closely the individual digital samples are spaced together over time.

Apparantly the ideal rate is somewhere between 22500 and 48000. I don't see any capability to change the pre-set bit rate.

Try the suggestion to use 44100 Hz project rate bottom left of Audacity. And use "MME" audio host in Device Toolbar.

If that does not help, you can change the sample rate of the device in Windows Sound. To do that, right-click over the speaker icon by the system clock, then choose "Recording Devices". Right-click over the EZCAP then choose "Properties". Then click the "Advanced" tab and change the default format to a stereo choice for 44100 Hz.


Gale