Audacity Forum

Hi All
I'm trying to record my vinyl collection but having problems getting a clean recording. After a few tutorials I've tried for several hours now including various internet forum searches but no answers! The levels look fine peaking around -6, sound coming through the headphones nice and clear, the waveform looks normal to me, but when I play back the recording there's a messy distortion noise on the beats, particularly the kicks. My set up is as follows:
Technics 1210 > Behringer VMX 300 mixer (levels around -2 to zero on meter output) coming out of 'tape' output > Maya 44 Usb soundcard > Mac OS 10.5.8 > Audacity 2.0.1
I've tried dropping the mixer output down and raising the input sliders up, and vice versa but no joy. Are there any known issues between maya and audacity? I'd really appreciate any feedback!
Many Thanks

Where do you have the headphones plugged so that the sound is undistorted? If it is the output of the mixer, perhaps the Maya is being overloaded.

How are you listening to the Audacity output? Headphones or iMac speakers or other?

The levels in Audacity could show peaks at -6 dB but the analog audio could be clipped before it reaches Audacity, most likely at the input to the Maya. The Maya does the analog to digital conversion, so the problem is unlikely to be with Audacity.

-- Bill

Hi Bill -
The sound was undistorted when listening to the mixer headphone output.
- but distorted when listening to Audacity recording through the Maya headphone output.
- I then tried the Audacity recording straight from the mac headphone output and it was ok
- I turned down the gain on the mixer completely, so that the waveform was completely within the 1.0 and - 1.0 range on the track windows re recorded and the result is much better. So, yes the maya soundcard was being overloaded, and looks like I may have blown out it's output but at least it's input seems ok and i can get on with my massive vinyl to digital project Thanks for your reply and all the best!