Steinberg clean v 5.0

[Northern Star]

hooked my hifi unit up.....installed the software.........got bloody lost from here...........i manage to get a tape recording as a practise on the pc but it sounds ten time worse than the original tape..................

i have a feeling it is a sound card problem..................i had creative lab sound card in there until recently but had to whip it out as something went wrong....i have now enabled the soundcard on the mother board.........but i dont feel this is adequate.......could this be the problem....or have i done something else wrong like hook the hifi up wrong.....!

cheers peeps.....x

[Mike]

Most onboard soundcards should be adequate for recording tapes... Check which input you have your tape deck plugged into, as you should be using "line in" rather than "mic" - the mic input will work but will sound terrible. It might be the case that your onboard card only has a mic input and not a line in, if that's the case you'd probably be better getting a cheapo soundblaster card to use instead.

What output are you using on your hifi - is it actually a line out or do you have it hooked up to the headphone socket? The headphone output will work but you might not get decent quality from it. Also if you're using the headphone output, any tone/treble/bass controls will affect the sound so you should set them to level, or maybe reduce the bass and increase the treble a little if the sound is muffled.

Hope this helps

[Northern Star]

Hi Mike........oh dear this is what i mean............not even sure bout input output.................here goes..............i have a two way lead coming from the output connection at the back of the hifi (one is red and one is black, i think)........and the other end of that goes straight into the mic socket at the back of pc...........so this may be the problem...........it sounds bloody awful.....you know like someone has turned the bass right up with bad speakers supporting......x

[Mike]

OK sounds like you have the lead plugged into the right place on the hifi but like I said, if you use the mic input on the PC it's gonna sound horrible - way too loud and bassy. See if there's another input socket next to the mic input - if not you'll need a new soundcard

[Northern Star]

Originally Posted by Mike

OK sounds like you have the lead plugged into the right place on the hifi but like I said, if you use the mic input on the PC it's gonna sound horrible - way too loud and bassy. See if there's another input socket next to the mic input - if not you'll need a new soundcard

I think there is Mike.......i will have a look when i go home for lunch.......much appreciated.......thank you.........

will let you know how i go! xx

[Mike]

One more thing to add, if you plug it into the line in socket and don't hear anything, you'll need to go into the windows mixer (usually found in the 'entertainment' bit of the programs menu in your start menu), make sure the volume controls are un-muted and turned up for Line In on both the record and playback bits (you can switch between record and playback using the options/properties menu).

[Northern Star]

Originally Posted by Mike

One more thing to add, if you plug it into the line in socket and don't hear anything, you'll need to go into the windows mixer (usually found in the 'entertainment' bit of the programs menu in your start menu), make sure the volume controls are un-muted and turned up for Line In on both the record and playback bits (you can switch between record and playback using the options/properties menu).

Oh dear...i knew there would be some kinda fiddlin required......will have a go and see what happens............that must be what they meant in the instructions by make sure all you spaeker or monitoring channels are open....eh....see what i mean.........hence the signature i need idiots guide to! lol....x