Can't hear any sound

[wgrant 0]

Hi guys -

 

On my first quest to record a cassette, I failed. I connected my stereo to my laptop but could not hear the tape playing. I'm sure I have the adapter connected correctly from the stereo to the laptop (see pics). The sound card does work as I can play all my music files and cds. I have no idea why I can't hear anything from the stereo. Does anyone have any thoughts on this or maybe had the same problem? I have a HP Pavilion dv2000. Please feel free to ask any other questions that I might not have answered already.

 

Thanks,

Wy

 

[wgrant 0]

Sorry, but that's where you have to listen and decide what you want. I prefer to capture everything "straight", with no equalization or cleaning, then I can play with it after that and have the original to go back to.

 

Keep in mind that all cleaning programs, if used too "heavily" can actually create more noise if they decide some of the music is "noise". Equalization and enhancement is entirely up to you and what you want the final product to sound like. Again, I'm usually one to trust the original recording engineer and producer and so I don't enhance or re-equalize, but that's only my preference. If you'll be playing this music in a known environment where you want some equalization, then doing that before putting it to CD may be a feature. Please yourself is the rule here, there is no golden standard better than what you like.

Thanks Dewey for your response. I recorded one song with and without cleaning. I can definitely tell there was a difference in the sound. No noise which is good. However, the volume was low when I played the song back on cd. Was there something I missed along the way?

[d_deweywright 118]

Thanks Dewey for your response. I recorded one song with and without cleaning. I can definitely tell there was a difference in the sound. No noise which is good. However, the volume was low when I played the song back on cd. Was there something I missed along the way?

You initial recording level is important. You want it to be about as loud as you can without clipping. You've probably noticed the recording level indicators on the left side of LP & Tape Assistant? As your recording level gets louder (in your case, you can control it using either the microphone input on your sound cards mixer, or the volume control of your stereo, since you're coming out of the headphone jack) it'll eventually reach a point where it says, "Clip", or something like that. That's too loud. It means you've lost some music and created some noise, even if it's not audible. You want to find a loud passage of music, and set the volume so it's just a little below clipping.

 

Yes, you're CDs may wind up sound quieter than a new CD, but that's because new CDs are being release that have had the music so compressed and limited that it's actually hard to listen to. As an example, below is a blown up section of the latest Earth, Wind and Fire CD. You can easily see where those large, low-frequency waves should have gone on up and off the screen... but they were limited to not be clipped. It sounds horrible. (The clip was displayed using GoldWave.) So, what they've done is make the quiet spots louder, and the loud sections that would have clipped, have been limited. The whole dynamic range of the music has been destroyed, and the promise of dynamic range in the digital world of CDs is being ignored, and even worse, it's not as good as you had with LPs and tapes! So, while your CDs the you create may sound quieter, they may also sound better than new releases.

 

Hope that helps!