Recording on Laptop with Docking Station (Vista)

[jjlove00]

I just moved into a new Gateway laptop for which I purchased a Triton docking station. I plugged in the microphone and got nothing. I fiddled then with the recording devices deal that you get when you right-click the sound icon in Vista. After "training the microphone," I got excellent sound in just the right speaker. Audacity is set to record in stereo, not mono. Any tips or insights.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Jason

[steve]

Does the laptop record correctly without the docking station?

[jjlove00]

Oddly enough, the microphone doesn't work at all when I plug the microphone into the front panel of my laptop. It records on only one speaker with the docking station.

I was excited to get a docking station so that I don't have to keep plugging in USB cords, but it seems to slow the computer down and may be screwing up my recording capabilities.

Signed,

Disillusioned

[jjlove00]

I just moved in to a Gateway laptop with Vista Home Premium. When I plugged the microphone into the front panel jack, Audacity did not pick up sound on both speakers (even though I had set it to record in stereo). In Microsoft's resident sound recorder, the sound is muddled and distant. Any suggestions about where I might turn. I'd hate to go back to Fry's to upgrade the sound card on a computer that I just purchased, but I use Audacity almost daily. Thanks for any help.

[steve]

When recording audio (or video) the "throughput" of data should be optimised so as to get the data from the recording device through to the hard drive as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you are plugging the microphone into the docking station then you are adding an extra step which may have an adverse effect. I would suggest that we try to get the laptop working without the docking station first, then when we've got that running properly we can have a go with the docking station and see if it is going to be possible to use that.

I presume that the microphone is a USB microphone?

If so,

Remove the laptop from the docking station and reboot.
Plug in the USB microphone and allow Windows to detect it.
Open the Windows Control Panel and check that the microphone has been correctly detected and is an available recording device - see here: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... ng_devices

When you have your recording and playback devices enabled, open Audacity.
In Audacity open "Preferences" from the Edit menu and go to the "Audio I/O" tab.
Select the USB microphone as the recording device and the sound card as the playback device (to match the settings in the Windows Control Panel).
Click OK and try recording something.