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I'm sure someone on here can solve this relatively easily. I've been using my roommates netbook to record as of late, since my comp's out of commission. I've been using Audacity, and whenever I record I get a lot of excess noise from the input. I've tried lowering the mic volume settings in Volume Control and Audacity, but I always seem to get a lot of noise when recording. Would this be an issue with audio settings in audacity or something with the netbook's hardware settings? I'm guessing the latter since I've never had this issue with audacity on any computer before.

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Geneva, NY

Totally netbook hardware.  My guess is that the wire to the audio input isn't shielded and/or the input is a piece of shit.  We had an issue at work where no one could get Dragon Speak to work and the issue was the route that the unshielded mic in on the FRONT of the PC took to get to the soundcard and there was interference.  The back jacks worked fine.  Unfortunately, netbooks don't have back jacks....

Also: what are you recording?  Is it an electric device that's plugged into a wall?  Is the netbook running off of AC power as well?  If so, it's a ground loop.  Try simply running the netbook off batteries while you're recording and that will take care of it.

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New York City

This shit happens frequently.
All these netbooks come with the same hardware, in the case of the audio, that input port runs some audio managing software which is SHIT.
Basically what happens is that your computer is probably still recording from the microphone or is thinking you plugged in a microphone instead of a line in.

Try messing with thw settings when you plug in a cable. Mine asks you about what was plugged in and it's usually opposite to logic (I gotta select MIC when I plugged LINE etc)

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The Mountains

Failing these methods, using a small USB interface instead of the built-in interface may produce different results. If I may ask, how well does the computer's speed hold up? any issues with latency or lagging? I have an aspire and it seems unreasonably slow at times, working to fix this, thinking of upping the ram or possibly installing ubuntu

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New York City
Rainbowdragoneyes wrote:

I have an aspire and it seems unreasonably slow at times, working to fix this

My Asus eeePC 900HA was working well and now it  works like ass after a re-install of XP. I think I need to upgrade the power manager software, seems to be "degrading" the max speed of the processor for no apparent reason. So when I had zero latency and sound crackle with my  sound card, now I have a lot.

I guess one can't expect much from a 200/300 computer.

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IL, US

yeah, i always use a usb soundcard on my aspire one, its built in sound card is total junk for anything beyond just playing back prerecorded audio from what ive noticed

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The Mountains

shitty luck- I got mine from craigslist and the dude fucked it up real nice so I HAD to reinstall xp, and yeah its pretty sluggish.

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New York City

Try to download the LATEST power management drivers, make sure your Atom is maxed at 1.60Ghz solid, and not variable.

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Things are still pretty assy in Linux on my eeepc 900HD all across the board as far as audio goes. Even fairly lightweight apps like SunVox and MPT (through Wine) stutter like me talking to a girl. It might just be me, but the audio output also sounds thinner, like if a normal PC were a DMG then my netbook would be a Game Boy Color...

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New York City

I use my Asus with an external, low latency, GOOD card. So my performance issue is CPU related, not audio hardware related and it seems to have to do with the machine switching CPU speeds even if I told it not to.

Last edited by akira^8GB (Aug 19, 2010 1:31 am)

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Geneva, NY
akira^8GB wrote:

I use my Asus with an external, low latency, GOOD card. So my performance issue is CPU related, not audio hardware related and it seems to have to do with the machine switching CPU speeds even if I told it not to.

I'm typing this post on a Lenovo s10e that does exactly that same shit.  Let me know if you find any fix, Akira.  It pisses me off that I have no issues working on my 7 year old Dell tower that's bogged down with all my wife's scanner shit, camera shit, etc. and yet my ultra-streamlined netbook crackles, pops and stutters.

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bleo wrote:

Also: what are you recording?  Is it an electric device that's plugged into a wall?  Is the netbook running off of AC power as well?  If so, it's a ground loop.  Try simply running the netbook off batteries while you're recording and that will take care of it.

Just Nanoloop on a normal DMG. I think I've had the netbook plugged in when I record. I'll try unplugging it when I record next time and see if that helps.

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London, Ontario

i record with an acer aspire one, i use adobe audition and my tracks come out fine. i typically have lots of other shit using up system resources too, so i dont know why you would have this problem unless the hiss is very subtle in which case you should stop complaining and get your own pc fixed.

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Wellington, New Zealand

I have the same sort of problem. I have a ASUS EeePC 1000ha with windows and ubuntu. Ubuntu can't record mic input at all, but windows sorta does. I tried 2 different cables for my mic in trying to record off my gameboy running lsdj. When I try recording it it starts out perfectly, then after about 1 second it gets really quiet and staticy, like a bad recording with a normal microphone of something. I just record most of my lsdj songs off the computers at school and my stepdad's computer.

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shotgun breakdown wrote:

i record with an acer aspire one, i use adobe audition and my tracks come out fine. i typically have lots of other shit using up system resources too, so i dont know why you would have this problem unless the hiss is very subtle in which case you should stop complaining and get your own pc fixed.

I am using the same, plus a 528E processor  and a good mic. then I run it through a Behringer board. I have so much hiss that even using the hiss reduction in cool edit didn't take it all out, plus it added a hard to pick up but still there electronic sound. Have you ever experienced that? Any solutions? This set up is identical to my home studio but the is my "on the road" studio but the quality has been unacceptable to most clients.
Donna

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Cambridge, MA

Rockband Mic + Guitar Amp actually gives me better recording quality than direct to Acer Aspire. =P