Problems recording audio

[BobCharlie]

Ok, I had WinXP and I hacked the time limit with Sound Recorder and used it to rip audio. In preferences I'd set to stereo and the highest quality- never any issues.

Then, Win7 64 Ultimate came along. Was extremely disappointed with the stripped features of "it's" sound recorder which seems to not even record anything as it is. Since WinXP is still on the 2nd HD, I copied WinXP's Sound Recorder to Win7 with the hacked time limit. If I set compatibility to WinXP SP3, it'll work and record when the Win7 version won't. I personally liked the WinXP Sound Recorder for it's simplicity and ability to do EXACTLY what I wanted w/o the hassles that many audio recording software have.

Trouble I'm having though, is say I'm recording audio from a Youtube video for example, it's acting like there is a high-pass filter enabled and all the lower frequencies are getting cut. Any ideas? I've tried going back and booting from the XP HD but I get memory errors now (16Gb RAM for Win7 gets capped @4Gb for XP) when trying to record, even though I have PLENTY of memory.

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

No help allowed here at Toms WITH HACKED SOFTWARE...

All the best Brett

 

[maestro0428]

Yeah, can't help you here is your software is not legit.

 

[BobCharlie]

Um, when did I ever say it wasn't legit? I bought the XP set up in 06' on an HP. When the HP's Asus board got a bricked bios after a bad flash, I bought a new board, CPU, etc. and put a fresh install of Win7 on a fresh HD. I KEPT MY OLD HP HD AND AM THE LEGAL OWNER AND IT'S STILL REGISTERED TO ME!!

Only thing "hacked" in sound recorder was the time limit allowed with recording which was like 15 sec IIRC and using a hex editor I changed that to 999 seconds.

Also, I'm getting the same issue with Audacity (freeware sound recorder). Even with recording gain at max it's still sounding like there is a cut-off with low frequencies and it's not as loud as it should be when recording with that as well, so it seems to be something else with Win7.

 

[Proximon]

XP Sound Recorder was limited to a short time as a service... it produces very large audio files and back in those days storage space was at a premium.

There was never anything wrong with "hacking" the time limit, and it is no violation of licensing rules. (Well, it could be, but the limit is not there for any licensing or copyright purposes and MS would not care.)

BobCharlie, sounds like you are having simple compatibility issues with software not designed to run in that environment.

Isn't there a Linux version for Audacity? Maybe you could try that as an experiment, just to rule out a hardware issue.

 

[darth pravus]

Try a proper audio capturing software such a reaper (free trial) and see what the levels give you.

Sound like a dodgy sound card/input if freqs are being cut.

 

[BobCharlie]

Try a proper audio capturing software such a reaper (free trial) and see what the levels give you.

Sound like a dodgy sound card/input if freqs are being cut.

Can you elaborate with the sound card input? It's got an integrated sound card. All audio played is OK (stereo hooked up and even head phones sound good), just the recording is the issue (playback of the recording does not sound good). Have spent time with the audio settings, but never a solution.

 

[darth pravus]

Well a dodgy contact or dying soundcard (even integrated) can cause frequency loss. Maybe even just a bad cable.

Did it specifically start on windows 7?

 

[BobCharlie]

Well a dodgy contact or dying soundcard (even integrated) can cause frequency loss. Maybe even just a bad cable.

Did it specifically start on windows 7?

Yes, it started with Win7 on the MSI 760GM-P35 board which will get replaced eventually. I didn't have any issues with the XP set up on the old mobo, but IIRC I used a S/PDIF cable. Basically ran a S/PDIF from PC to stereo, then ran a signal out from the stereo BACK to the PC's input jack for recording purposes (believe I used headphone out from stereo to PC input, haven't done so in several years and haven't thought about it since then). So, the PC was essentially outputting it's sound signal to the stereo (getting a slight clean up along the way) then recording from the stereo.

Now, the MSI board does NOT have a S/PDIF plug, so as a work around I'm using an RCA (red/white to the stereo) cable to mini (stereo) headphone plug to get the PC's sound to the stereo which works fine, albeit not exactly high qualty like S/PDIF. But I have NOT tried running the stereo BACK to the PC's input, rather been trying to just get the PC to record sound internally from itself and not been successful with producing a full-range good quality audio recording yet.


I have a normal headphone jack to mini headphone female connector on a 6' cable and might buy a male-to-male connector and see if that works (basically like the XP set up with headphone out from stereo to 3.5mm input on PC). I know the stereo's volume control will help boost the input signal to the PC's input for recording, but 50/50 chance of getting the frequency cut-off and just seems stupid to have to do this to record "proper" sound from my PC .

 

[darth pravus]

There are capture programs that you can use to capture audio direct from source.

Looping back into the same sound card sounds like it will cause all sorts of issues.

Do you have the proper win 7 sound drivers for your board?

 

[BobCharlie]

There are capture programs that you can use to capture audio direct from source.

Looping back into the same sound card sounds like it will cause all sorts of issues.

Do you have the proper win 7 sound drivers for your board?

Pretty sure the sound driver is proper. I've tried "updating" and it'll say I have the best the driver.


OK, after reading your comment about "Sound Capture" I spent a few minutes looking for sound capture software and was reverted back to Audacity which apparently can capture sound as opposed to recording from mic input (never new there was a difference). In my case, I set the 4 drop down boxes near the center to "Windows Direct", "Primary Sound Driver", "Primary Sound Capture", and finally "2 (stereo) input". The sounds were still cut-off in the lower frequency range, so I decided to record a 30 sec music track and save as a project file. From there I messed with the Bass Boost from the "Effects" tab as it was now selectable. It worked, but I wasn't satisfied with the sound so I reverted the project and instead used the "Equalizer" from the Effect tab. After messing with that and fine-tuning the Gain - + under the "Mute" & "Solo" boxes at the left of audio graph, I was finally able to listen to something with head phones and not be disgusted LOL. Only draw-backs are you can't make adjustments in real-time and instead have to pause the recording, adjust a slider, use "Preview" to see if it helps, then go from there. Thankfully you can create custom presets to have a base-line to work from. Suggest adjusting sliders minimally at a time to avoid possible distortion and using headphones to detect the music accurately before using the music permanently. PITA but it works.



Thanks Darth Pravus for pointing me in a viable direction!

 

[darth pravus]

haha No problem.

Although that's a good solution I'd love to know what cause the issue.

Glad it's fixed. All the best.

 

[BobCharlie]

I'm betting the integrated card is just not very good for whatever reason. I also found I could use some old .wav files I made with the XP recorder on Win7 and improve them enough with Audacity that they could at least be listened too. Take care.

 

[BobCharlie]

Best answer selected by BobCharlie.

 

[Proximon]

This topic has been closed by Proximon