audacity recording playback help

[Mr. Davenport]

im recording thru a usb ext soundcard into audacity. sounds fine going in. all the levels are right, but when i play it back its all distorted and fucked up sounding. running RCAs from sp to sound card. i dont know what im doing wrong.

[Mr. Davenport]

damn its impossible to get any help on this thing, no tech support, no one in any of the forums have anything to offer. Fuck it

[Dr. Tad Winslow]

I've never used Audacity before, but on most DAWs you have to set the recording device/interface AND the playback device/interface seperatly... Go into options or preferences or whatever and make sure you have your external USB interface set as the recording and playback device...

[Mr. Davenport]

thats the first thing i did

[Mr. Davenport]

all i wanna do is record in stereo. why the fuck cant computers just have L/R inputs, why?

[dman5000]

you can get a usb stereo hook up for pretty cheap maybe 20-30 bucks
heres one i use right now
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BVV2IC

[ColeRockLee]

What usb soundcard are you using? What kind of comptuer? What OS are you running? What cables are you using to connect the sampler and soundcard?

[Mr. Davenport]

^
maya44 usb
gateway multi media vista
RCAs

[ColeRockLee]

Make sure your soundcard drivers are up to date. After you record are the waveforms you see in Audacity clipped? Is it only Audacity's playback distorting?

[cartesia]

maybe your monitor/thru mix (that you hear while you're recording) is at a different level (LOWER) to the actual input/recording in audacity


Also, maybe audacity just sucks ass.. actually that's a known fact.. but it shouldn't be related to your problem

[DREWDANK]

if your on a mac turn your input sound down too. well pc too. that happened to me took me a week lol. and go to the settings of audacity return them all to default.

[CULP]

you are recording too hot ?? watch audacity as you record. you dont want your waves signs to be too big maybe try exporting off your CF card with a cf card reader???

[EarlGrey]

There's an sound setting in OSX where you have to select line-in instead of mic-in (default). The mic-in is very sensitive and not meant to be used for this type of recording.

good luck.