Bob-Dubery
Wish I knew who to direct that endearment towards.
My PC got infected with gremlins. Fans stopped spinning. They would start when you booted but then spin right down again and not start up. The BIOS would catch the high heat levels and shut down before anything cooked, but this was clearly not ideal. I had an AMD Athlon machine, ASUS motherboard, Win XP.
Went down to the local computer store. They gave me a choice of some gizmo that would keep the fans turning (though the BIOS wouldn't know they were turning) or a motherboard upgrade. One thing led to another and I now have a machine with an ASUS motherboard (different one), Intel CPU and and Win 7.
So I got Audacity installed and tried to record. Same set up as I used to use before. Line out from the amp into the mic input on the sound card. Nada. Not a sausage. RTFM and I find out that the on-board sound card seems to have some kind of software wrapper around it and that the mic socket has some special gizmo for autodetecting the presence of a mic. Hmmmm.... move the cable to the line in socket and still nothing.
Audacity allows me to select Line In as an input source, but detects no signal. I can play MP3s through the sound card, but when I use the line in for a guitar I don't hear the guitar on the headphones.
Life should not be this complicated.
Any bright ideas?
Reinhard
Hi Bob
I had a problem when switching to Win7, where my PC would not detect my soundcard, or my line 6 Guitar port etc. What you can try is to get updated drivers for your motherboard, preferably win7 drivers.
Also, go to Control panel - Hardare and sound- Sound And check the line in etc. It should show you if a line in is detected (not sure if you have done this.
You could also go into device manager and check whether there are any conflicts regarding your audio.
But definitely check the drivers, or go back to winXP (pain in the butt to do a reinstall I know).
Hope this helps
Reinhard
DonovanB
also an ASIO4All driver might help
AlanRatcliffe
Does the board soundcard have both front and rear sockets? Have you tried both sets?
Bob-Dubery
Hi all,
THanks for the responses. I'll try to deal with them all here...
1) The machine has front and rear sockets. I can't get either to work - though as headphones work on both sets I presume they are connected.
2) Effectively the chassis, memory, power supply and hard disk was retained from my existing machine. The shop in question fitted a new motherboard and CPU and installed Win 7. The sound card plays, so I presume drivers were installed.
3) Control Panel shows "line in" detected and working properly.
Reverting to XP is an option - if I can find the install discs. I know I had them. I suspect they have been "borrowed". If I'd even had a legal installation key the shop would have used that to do a reload of XP and have it recognise the new hardware.
Wizard
I'd suggest trying other software that uses the microphone ... to try and isolate whether it's the hardware, operating system or application software that's causing the trouble.
Does something like Skype, for example, work with the microphone?
Bob-Dubery
Wizard wrote
I'd suggest trying other software that uses the microphone ... to try and isolate whether it's the hardware, operating system or application software that's causing the trouble.
Does something like Skype, for example, work with the microphone?
I tried using the sound recorder app that comes bundled with Win 7. Same results. Both apps do pick up the mic in my web cam - VIA a USB connection.
Bob-Dubery
A couple of things that I noticed.
1) Audacity used to have access to an input source "audio mix". That's no longer there.
2) Now that I've found the little mixer app that allows you to adjust different audio streams in Windows, I see that it lists just to audio streams - "speakers" and "system sounds".
Wizard
Looking at the Audacity site I see they are making continuous upgrades for Windows 7 compatibility.
I see they are recommending use of 1.3.12 (beta) for Windows 7 users.
Which version are you using?
Bob-Dubery
Well.... some progress.
I found sound card drivers on the disk that came with the motherboard. So I installed those. Then I went into
Control Panel -> Hardware & Sound -> Sound > Manage Audio Devices -> Recording
I told it to list disabled devices and "CD Audio" and "Stereo Mix" came up. I enabled Stereo Mix.
Ha! I still can't record via Stereo Mix, but I can now record via line-in. But
1) Latency issues
2) I still can't just play through the PC, I have to be RECORDING in Audacity, to hear what I am playing -but as per (1) there is audible latency in the chain.
Bob-Dubery
As per Wizard's suggestion I downloaded the latest Beta release of Audacity.
No improvement. I still have a delay between hitting a note and hearing a note, and I still can only hear the guitar in the cans when I'm recording in Audacity.
Renesongs
I haven't read the replies but enough to know that you are probably dealing with a an on-board Realtek enhanced sound card. It is a kak interface to say the least. IIRC you click on the little red speaker icon in at the right of your taskbar and it brings up the mixer settings interface. you will notice that there is no apparent way to control the inputs Some were to the right of the of the mixer interface there is a more or advanced or scroll button that opens the input mixer and there you will find that the mic settings are either muted or not activated.
I know this is all rather vague but I dealt with this problem on a client's machine who was trying to get the mic to work for Skype nearly a year ago so my recollection is a bit fuzzy.
Bob-Dubery
Renesongs wrote
I haven't read the replies but enough to know that you are probably dealing with a an on-board Realtek enhanced sound card. It is a kak interface to say the least. IIRC you click on the little red speaker icon in at the right of your taskbar and it brings up the mixer settings interface. you will notice that there is no apparent way to control the inputs Some were to the right of the of the mixer interface there is a more or advanced or scroll button that opens the input mixer and there you will find that the mic settings are either muted or not activated
Yep, a Realtek.
