Low amplitude recorded from CD

[cappy2112]

I'm running Windows XP, SP2, Toshiba Tecra M9 with 2GB of ram, Realtek HD Audio card

I played an audio CD in Winamp, and recorded a stereo track in Audcacity 1.2.6, 44.1khz.

I have the record input level sliders in Control panel open all the way, the output volume on Winamp all the way up.

To my ears, the audio coming out of my laptop is very loud.

When I record the stereo track in Audacity, the look of the amplitude is very low.
(I have the input level sliders in Audacity all the way up as well).

I had to normalize the signal twice before I could even see it's amplitude envelope.

Attached is a small screenshot showing my signal amplitude, as well as a screenshot from the Audacity helpfile showing a nice signal amplitude.

What are some reasons which cause my signals to be recorded at such low amplitude when the source is obviously very high amplitued?

[jan.kolar]

I see "Stereo Mix" selected in you beautifull picture.

First I would try to replace "Stero Mix" by "CD".
But I do not know if WinAmp plays CD's using the analog line.
If not, try starting CD-playback my the little program included in Windows.
(If "CD" fails, you could try "Wave", too.)

If "CD" fails, try again "Stereo Mix" but make it louder (*).
First, watch out. Where you recording CD or did you record your room using builtin microphone ??
If it was the microfon, we have to change it --- go for (**) to the end of this post.

Both (*) (**) are to be changed in Windows Volume Control.

In the playback version of Windows Volume Control,
there are to controls influencing (*): The first is master setting "Stereo Mix",
and the second one is either "CD" or "Wave" depending on which way WinAmp uses.
Make it much louder. You will probably have to disconnect your speakers or change their's amp volume.

For (**) we need Recording version of Windows Volume Control
(go through Control Panels or through Speaker icon, with the second way, you must change from Playback to Record setting using Edit>Properties or somethink like that. Discribed on Wiki and several times on this Forum.)
There, you select sound source. Should be CD (nearly equivalent to setting "CD" in Audacity, but this takes longer route.)
or Wave (in the Winamp puts the sound through Wave). Adjust the level here.

Did that help ?

[kozikowski]

We should also probably remember that the standard CD audio level is -17 dBFS. That works out to about 0.1% on the Audacity meters. But, you're right, even at that, your waveforms are really low. All the early CDs were recorded at that standard level although the newer ones aren't.

The early Windows audio panels had two windows, one for record and the other for playback. The playback one came up first and you have to know to go looking for the record panel from there.

Mix Out is fun. Both sets of audio panels are working and you need to set both. See: Kolar.

Koz

[steve]

I played an audio CD in Winamp, and recorded a stereo track in Audcacity 1.2.6, 44.1khz.

WinAmp has an "output plug-in" called "Disk writer". I think it is included as standard.
If you select the Disk writer as the output instead of the sound card, and then play music in WinAmp, you will not hear the sound, but it will be written directly to disk. This is all done in the digital domain and is an excellent way of "recording" any audio that WinAmp is capable of playing.

Once you have the wav file on your hard drive, you can import it into Audacity if you want to edit or process it.

There is also an optional "File writer" plug-in that is very similar, but offers more flexibility for naming files: http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details/96985
I think there is also a plug-in for writing directly as an MP3 (look in the output plug-in section of the WinAmp site if you are interested in this).

[cappy2112]

I see "Stereo Mix" selected in you beautifull picture.

First I would try to replace "Stero Mix" by "CD".

There is no CD option visible there, only Stero Mix, and MIC

If "CD" fails, try again "Stereo Mix" but make it louder (*).
First, watch out. Where you recording CD or did you record your room using builtin microphone ??

As mentioned in my first post, I was playing a CD in Winamp, recording it in Audacity

Both (*) (**) are to be changed in Windows Volume Control.

In the playback version of Windows Volume Control,
there are to controls influencing (*): The first is master setting "Stereo Mix",
and the second one is either "CD" or "Wave" depending on which way WinAmp uses.
Make it much louder. You will probably have to disconnect your speakers or change their's amp volume.

Everything is at their highest setting. All sliders in Control panel, on both record and playbak settings

For (**) we need Recording version of Windows Volume Control
Did that help ?[/quote]
No

[cappy2112]

I played an audio CD in Winamp, and recorded a stereo track in Audcacity 1.2.6, 44.1khz.

WinAmp has an "output plug-in" called "Disk writer". I think it is included as standard.
If you select the Disk writer as the output instead of the sound card, and then play music in WinAmp, you will not hear the sound, but it will be written directly to disk. This is all done in the digital domain and is an excellent way of "recording" any audio that WinAmp is capable of playing.

Once you have the wav file on your hard drive, you can import it into Audacity if you want to edit or process it.

There is also an optional "File writer" plug-in that is very similar, but offers more flexibility for naming files: http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details/96985
I think there is also a plug-in for writing directly as an MP3 (look in the output plug-in section of the WinAmp site if you are interested in this).

Surely there has got to be a better way than to wait for the whole track to be played/written to the disk, without even hearing it.

[steve]

Surely there has got to be a better way than to wait for the whole track to be played/written to the disk, without even hearing it.

Yes there is - that is just one way that you can do it using your current software.
A better way to do it is to "Rip" the CD.

There are several good (free) CD rippers that will digitally extract the audio in a fraction of the time it takes to listen to them.
"Exact Audio Copy" will produce virtually perfect copies as long as the CD is in reasonably good condition (it is very slow with scratched CDs).
"C-Dex" is another good CD ripper, (and copes with bad CDs a bit better).

With either of these programs you can rip single tracks, or the whole CD.
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

If your computer is connected to the internet, they can also get the track names for most CDs for you, plus many other bonus features.

[cappy2112]

Surely there has got to be a better way than to wait for the whole track to be played/written to the disk, without even hearing it.

Yes there is - that is just one way that you can do it using your current software.
A better way to do it is to "Rip" the CD.

That's ridiculous. I only want 20 seconds of audio from 1 track
WHat the heck is wrong with Audacity that you have to go to all this trouble to get cd audio?

[steve]

That's ridiculous. I only want 20 seconds of audio from 1 track
WHat the heck is wrong with Audacity that you have to go to all this trouble to get cd audio?

With a CD ripping program, you could do that in about 10 seconds and avoid all the headaches with working out how to configure your computer sound system. Yes it's a configuration problem with your computer sound system, not a problem with Audacity.

Audacity can do what you are asking, but you will need to set up the computer sound system correctly. Unfortunately this can be a bit complicated with Realtek HD Audio cards (which is why I was suggesting alternatives so that you could get round the problem easily).

Audacity records the audio that is made available to it by the "sound card drivers". These "drivers" are software that control and make available the sound card hardware to your computer and other programs that run on your computer. Audacity is a slave to the computer sound system, it can only record the sounds that the sound card drivers supply it with.

In Windows, the sound card drivers have a graphical user interface that can usually be accessed via a loudspeaker icon that is in the bottom right of your screen near the clock (the same place as the volume control). Double clicking on this. or right clicking and selecting an option is the usual way of accessing the drivers "control panel" or "mixer application". If the control panel or mixer application are not available this way, then you need to go to the Windows Control Panel to get to it. (fortunately you are on XP and not Vista, as Vista is even more un-user-friendly for setting this up).

In the mixer control panel, there are usually two sections - one for the playback settings and one for the record settings. To record from CD you need to access the record settings, enable or select the CD input and adjust the input (record) level.

There is more information and some illustrations on this page: http://www.audacityteam.org/wiki/index. ... bar_Issues
Note that the RealTek HD driver sometimes has a customised interface that looks very different to the illustrations on that page.