line in and audacity

with my new computor i got a good sound card and one of them things that goes were ur disk drive would be that has lots of ports like line in as well as midi.

but i have had a proble when tryin to record stuff.

it could be audacity it could be the sound card it could be me.

i plug the lead in from the headphone socket on the back of my amp, and plug it into the line in port. turnesd the little volume thing up a bit. and sure enough i can hear my guitar through the computor speakers. then i downloaded audacity. pressed record and sure neough it records what i play.

this is were the problem starts i try to record the second track over the backing one and yes my lead part is picked up, but the rythm part playing beneath it is also picked up except its like a second too slow. so i get this doubled up rythm part slightly out of sink with itself. if i turn the speakers off it doesnt change this in fact any sound my computor makes is recorded. i can switch the output volume down and this doesnt happen, but then i cant hear the track im sposed to be playing over. and i can turn the impuit volume down but then nothing is recorded.

help would be apreciated.

i have the exact same problem with my laptop and have yet to find a solution, sorry i cant be of any help
if you have onboard sound on the motorboard you could try pluging your speakers into that, or hunt through all the device settings and see if thees something you can alter

out of sync? yep ive faced that many times before myself (if not always)..what i do is pull the backing track or the lead either up or down slowly...it takes alot of patience to find the right timing sometimes...just select the horizontal cursor and click and drag the track you're wanting to tweak and slowly adjust to the timing you want...hope this helps!

One thing to try - make sure your recording device isn't the same as the playback device, or it will indeed try to record it's own output.

In my case the recording device is set to the microsoft sound mapper, or my USB device when that's connected.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/2/3/727985/aud.jpg

Ahh, I have the same problem. What I do is after the recording of the 2nd track, I enlarge, or magnify the track so i can delete the very first part of the 2nd track, therefore making it in sync with the 1st. Its a guess and check thing that requires the use the UNDO funtion many times. Its the only thing I found that really works.

the only reason why i ask is i used audacity before and it diodnt do this. now it does.

Dudes, download Reaper for free instead, no such problems http://www.reaper.fm/download.php
It's a LOT more powerful than audacity (which ain't bad by the way) and comes with most of the extras you pay $700+ for with the likes of Cubase SX3 or ProTools. You get it for free on the above link and if you like it then you can pay the creators a small sum - get it while it's free, it won't be for much longer!

downloaded reaper and it does the same thing as audacity. this means im pretty sure its some sound card thingy. thanks anyway though, it does look like a good program.

Something else to try in that case - your drivers for your soundcard may be causing the problem. It's worth trying this:

http://www.asio4all.com/

ASIO drivers are designed to reduce latency, and this one is generic for most soundcards so may just work for you.

Seeing as the problem is definitly your soundcard then you need to check out the manufacturers website for tips on reducing latency. You may need some extra Ram, how much you running at the moment? Also, check out www.musicxp.net for some great tips on maximising the performance of your pc for home recording.

it isnt the ram i got 2 gigs of that. so it must be the sound card. ow well i better get started. basically it records anythin that come out of the speakers, so if i play music then press record in audacity it records the music. hmmm.

hurahh i fixed it. it was under some setting to record what you hear and i changed it so now it works. which is great.

could you explain how fixed it please because i have the same problem

This all depends on your soundcard. But in the recording section make sure "What you Hear" is not selected. On some cards this might be called stereo mix. These should't be selected. Select line in and I think you'll be set

ok well i only did it in reaper so follow superhumans link and get if if u havent already

in the top right of the screan you will see something saying audio device selcted or in my case 44100Hz 16 bit 2/2ch 1024 spls ~ ........ wave out.

... means other stuff

um origonally instead of line out it said play what you hear.