recorded audio now sounds tinny, hollow, from a barrel

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For a long time I recorded audio from online music sources using Freecorder, with good results. Then I was forced to upgrade to Version 5, which I did not like, so I uninstalled it and began looking for alternatives. That’s when I discovered that everything had mysteriously changed for the worse. As I tried several applications–Audacity and others–I found that the quality of the audio was horrible, no matter which application was recording it. Everything sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a barrel. Yet if I play an old music file, the sound is still good, so it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with my overall audio settings. Does anyone have an idea what could have changed?

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Have you tried reinstalling your original version of Freecoder?

How were you “forced” to upgrade from your original version of Freecoder?

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I did look for an old version of Freecorder, and even found some sites that purported to have it, but each time I downloaded, I got Version 5 again. Freecorder must redirect the downloading or something. But I lost hope that an earlier version of Freecorder would solve the problem after I tried a couple of other programs and found they all produced the same hollow-barrel sound.

I was forced to upgrade after Firefox seemed to catch a virus that made it crash constantly. When I uninstalled Firefox, I lost the old version of Freecorder and had to get the latest version when I reinstalled Firefox.

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Look in systray for an icon which identifies your sound card. You should have the option to use the EAX console to produce different effects. Right click it and then click “EAX Console”.

Mine looks like this:

31028-eax_console

If you can’t see the icon and you’re using Windows 7, click the “Custom” link to open the menu listing. You should be able to find it in there.

Also, check the Sounds menu in Control Panel. That should also give you some options.

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Thanks for the ideas.

Couldn’t find anything useful in the Sounds menu in Control Panel.

Don’t know what or where the “Customs” link is.

Couldn’t find an icon for my sound card on the taskbar. I did find settings for it (Apowersoft_AudioDevice, by Wondershare) in Control Panel / Hardware and Sound / Sound: Manage audio devices. I checked to see that the driver is up to date, but I couldn’t find any option to take me to the EAX console.

I used Adudacity to record a music file, then saved it in lossless .ogg format to see whether that might be better than mp3, but it still has the barrel sound.

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Some extra thoughts…

Do you have a separate sound card, or is it built into the motherboard? Recheck some of your settings, look in “Windows Sounds”
under “playback” for your audio, looks like you may have generic, or “speaker” sound controls. Look for an audio driver update.

Have another look at what might have changed in your operating system too, maybe an ” SFC /SCANNOW”, especially after recovering
from “catch a virus” isn’t a bad idea. Maybe even a full repair install. But I would run the sfc /scannow command if you havn’t already.

You may want to compare sound quality with what you have already ripped to those that that you have with the new applications.
Maybe take a closer look at the settings. Not quite sure what ecactly your using as “online sound sources”, internet radio? Video sounds?

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One step forward, one step back. It suddenly occurred to me that the poor quality sounded almost like ambient room noise, maybe a result of recording from the microphone instead of internally. As a test, I played a file and spoke at the same time and, sure enough, the recording included my voice on the output file. Aha! So I went into Windows Sounds and starting changing devices and settings, guiding myself by what seemed the most likely choices … oh-oh. At first I lost even output to my speakers, but I got that back by selecting the correct one of my two listed speakers. But now nothing whatever gets recorded when I play a file and hit Record in Audacity or Freecorder (which I’ve now installed as version 5 for testing purposes).

When I click on the Recording tab in Control Panel / Sounds, the three options are Line, (the caption shows Apowersoft_AudioDevice, which might be my audio card), Microphone (caption: Not plugged in – apparently it wants to be plugged in through a jack), and Microphone (caption: Webcam Pro 9000. Ready.) Line is shown as the default device for recording. The icon shows a two cables, one red and one white, which doesn’t quite look like what I want, which is to record directly from the sound card.

So I’m not sure whether I’ve moved forward or not. I’ve discovered what was wrong about my recorded sound, but not how to get it right.

I don’t know whether my sound card is separate or on the motherboard.
The quality of the old recorded files is fine, the new ones terrible.
Mostly I’m recording from the Naxos online music library (legitimately, since I have access through my account with the public library).

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Maybe you could consider using a different application. Here’s one I found on the web: http://www.accmeware.com/free_sound_recorder.html

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Thanks for the idea, but it’s not the recording program that’s the problem. I’ve tried a handful of recording programs, even Microsoft’s own built-in Recorder (located in Accessories), but none of the software hears or records anything. It’s all a huge mystery, and I despair of fixing it without taking it into a repair shop. It’s weird that everything was working fine on my system for years until recently. I’ve got a wonderful collection of mp3 files that I’ve recorded from the online Naxos library. So it’s not that my sound card doesn’t have a What You Hear feature, as I’ve seen suggested on elsewhere.

I’ve been looking around the Internet for other ideas and found lengthy discussions at http://www.sevenforums.com, where all kinds of suggestions are given, but none of them apply to my case or, if they do, none of them have worked for me. I guess it’s going to cost me some money to take it in to the shop, unless somebody here has had the same experience as me and actually knows for sure what’s going on.

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Thanks for the idea, but it’s not the recording program that’s the problem. I’ve tried a handful of recording programs, even Microsoft’s own built-in Recorder (located in Accessories), but none of the software hears or records anything. It’s all a huge mystery, and I despair of fixing it without taking it into a repair shop. It’s weird that everything was working fine on my system for years until recently. I’ve got a wonderful collection of mp3 files that I’ve recorded from the online Naxos library. So it’s not that my sound card doesn’t have a What You Hear feature, as I’ve seen suggested on elsewhere.

I’ve been looking around the Internet for other ideas and found lengthy discussions at http://www.sevenforums.com, where all kinds of suggestions are given, but none of them apply to my case or, if they do, none of them have worked for me. I guess it’s going to cost me some money to take it in to the shop, unless somebody here has had the same experience as me and actually knows for sure what’s going on.

Have you tried running System Restore to wind back the clock to a time and date prior to the ‘forced’ upgrade? That should take you back to Freerecorder 4 which you say worked OK.

You need to check the menus for that too and remove any option to automatically update so that you’re not landed with the upgrade again.

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Great idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. Unfortunately, when I did try it on your suggestion, in the list of my Restore points the first 4-5 don’t go far back enough, and the rest are too old, starting at 18 months ago.

Again, finding an earlier version of Freecorder or using some other recording program won’t help, because NO programs are able to record.

I’ve been through Control Panel a dozen times and have tried everything that seems in any way connected with audio. The “Recording” tab looked especially hopeful, but it didn’t provide a solution.

I guess I’ll have to take it in for repair, lose the use of it for a day or two, and pay money for what will probably be a minor tweak to some setting that I haven’t been able to locate. Maybe I’ll end up buying a new sound card.

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Have you tried contacting Applian? Maybe they can advise you how to fix the problem? http://applian.com/support-products.php

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After all that talk of software, have you checked to see if your speaker jack is fully plugged in? Have you noted whether the sound is mono or stereo for a stereo recording? Have you wiggled the speaker cables to see if there are continuity problems in the cables? Have you checked the Tone and Volume controls on the speakers?

I can report all of the above for problems of my own that I have encountered at one time or another, and I had to reseat a keyboard jack this very morning. If it all happened overnight, so to speak, and fooling around with software is getting you nowhere, then simple hardware is the place you should be looking.

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Fixed. I took it into my local computer shop, and they said they had a helluva time with it. My guess is that they worked on it for 3 hours, even though in general they don’t troubleshoot software issues (they charged only $35 labour plus $10 for cables). The fix they came up with was to connect a cable to the Line Out jack, then connect a splitter to that, and take one of the resulting lines to the speakers and the other to the Line In jack. In other words, one of the lines is coming out of the audio card, then going back into it again, which sounds a little weird. Whatever works. Also, he said he had to hunt around for some sort of driver, not the driver for my audio card. When I look in Control Panel/Sound/Recording, there are new items there named Line In: Realtek High Definition Audio (Ready), CD Audio: Realtek High Definition Audio (disabled), Stereo Mix: Realtek High Definition Audio (Disabled).

The mystery remains why everything used to work hunky-dory and why it couldn’t be simply restored to the way it was in those glory days, but I’m happy just to get it working again.

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Check the record settings in the Windows Mixer or the Mixer application provided by your soundcard.

You may have a situation in which the monitor (playback output) is redirected back into the record path along with the line input. When that happens the line input is mixed with the monitor output which is a copy of the line input. Depending upon the polarity and monitor latency there will be “phase cancellation” producing the scooped-out hollow sound.

On Creative Soundcards the monitor into record control is called “What you hear.” If “What you hear” is up and line is up, line input is comming into the record path two different ways.

In reading your post it sounds like stereo mix and line in were active at the same time.

Now, the reason you are hearing ambient room noise I can’t comment on but I suspect you have an open microphone somewhere.

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My system doesn’t seem to have Windows Mixer. My soundcard is, I believe, on the motherboard. I think it appears under Devices as Apowersoft_AudioDevice.

Anyway, I don’t think it was a problem of mixing. The “hollow” sound simply resulted because somehow my audio settings had changed and my system was recording through the microphone. When I changed the Recording default from Microphone to Line In, the hollow sound stopped because everything stopped; all recording stopped.

As I said above, the problem has been “fixed,” using cables. But I wouldn’t say it has been “solved” yet, since I still don’t understand what was going on. Sometimes, I suppose, we just have to accept a mystery and move on.

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Windows and third-party mixer settings can be very confusing. Add to that the fact that some software lets you configure which hardware to use with it!

I see you have a fix, but my suggestion in future is to start by unplugging anything not required (much easier on a desktop than a laptop). Examples would be external webcams or microphones.

Then cut out all distractions: run the line-in silently so playback speakers don’t confuse you (line out levels are unaffected by volume controls, unless you use a headphone socket as line out).

Monitor your tests on headphones and ideally find a graphical input level display somewhere in your soundcard or recording software. Check headphones first by just playing some music, to ensure the playback volume is up but not too loud.

Tap on microphones and see if you get a thump. Try different record source choices until you hear line in. If you have no source handy, touching the contacts at the end of a line-in lead will often give an indicative bump or a buzz, and I’ve never damaged anything (or myself) by doing so.

If all else fails, go looking for the relevant manual.

I was a sound engineer for years and then a BBC radio producer: I’ve been through this kind of grief plenty o’times!

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I have had this issue before. It can occur if the volume settings are set too high. You’ve said that you’ve checked all the Windows sound recording settings but I find that with some microphones the ideal recording volume is at about 20% – any higher than this and it just sounds like distortion. This is what happens on my laptop.

So check that you have selected the correct sound input/recording device (ideally from the program that you’re trying to record with but if you just want to do a quick test you can use Windows Sound Recorder) and then ensure that the recording volume of that device is set to a reasonable level (try 20% but also try at different volumes). Different programs might change these settings (it could be that FreeCorder had it’s own auto-volume levelling system which reduced the volume whilst you were using it but for other applications the record volume is cranked upto max. If the program doesn’t have it’s own settings then look in the Control Panel for the default recording device and default volume levels.

Ensure you’re using the correct drivers. I’m surprised that the repair shop changed the drivers – updating them is one thing but to disable it and install the wrong ones doesn’t sound right to me. You may wish to revert to the original drivers but test it how it is first. There are programs like Unknown Devices (search Google for it) that will identify your audio hardware (or motherboard model if it’s integrated to the motherboard) and you can use this information to find the correct driver.

Hope this is helpful.

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this is a common problem
there are 7 places you can diddle audio in windows

use audacity
go to the audacity forum and ask for help

you may need to turn the mike off

try clicking on the speaker icon in the tray and exploring the various settings first
you could have an effect on also
shoudl be able to turn the mike off there too

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For Mixer, click on the Speaker icon, and then on the word ‘Mixer’ below the (volume setting) display that is brought up by the icon.

As for hardware, the volume ‘master’, by which I mean ‘compulsory adjustment’, is the volume control on the speaker wherever it may be. It’s just one link in the chain of such ‘compulsory’ settings, but if the speaker is turned off or set too low you will get no sound or too-weak sound. It’s easy to forget, especially with generally older laptops which have a physical (and invariably well-hidden) dial adjustment for the built-in or external speaker control, or the more modern laptops with a volume scale on the keyboard above the keys.

How in blazes you set all of these things for optimal sound I don’t know, but one thing I do remember from personal experience is that turning the Tone control to its high(est) setting will help you hear the human voice better (subject to all of the components of your system). I was taking (expensive) tutorials in which I could hardly make out the voice of the speaker, and it took some time to realize that it was that setting that made the speaker’s voice almost incomprehensible to me.

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If you use Windows and MS Office, did the Office speech recognition inadvertently get turned on?

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