distortion

[alec]

I am transfering from a sony dat to a hard drive - line out>line in. The db level on the dat is mid scale, -12 to -4, viewed while recording or playback and sound is perfect, but Audacity meter reads at 0 and beyond during transfer, and the transfered sound is clipped. The sampling rate for the dat and audacity is set at 44.1hz. I am running windows XP.

[whomper]

then between dat and audacity something is adding gain
lower it

if you cant lower it in the sound card or wherever
then lower the output of the dat

[steve]

There are different standards for "Line level".
Consumer audio equipment usually has a nominal level of −10 dBV
Professional audio equipment usually has a nominal level of +4 or +6 dBu

If the Sony DAT is using the professional standard, a full-scale signal will overload a consumer standard line level input.
It may be worth checking the manual for the Sony to see if the output can be switched to -10 dBV

[kozikowski]

<<<It may be worth checking the manual for the Sony to see if the output can be switched to -10 dBV>>>

Probably not. DAT machines are aggressively professional. Most of us without TV stations in our house use the headphone output and use the headphone volume control for output level.

Koz