Hi there, sorry to trouble you all again. Well I ordered a highly-rated USB sound card off Amazon for my laptop and an RCA-to-3.5mm (headphone) jack cable to hook up my Technics to the PC. I put the two RCA jacks in the line output of the Technics as expected, headphone jack into the line input/microphone input of the USB sound card, adjusted everything and began to record... There's horrible background noise! It's so loud it deafens the actual music, which is extremely quiet but definitely there. I've cleaned the tape head and pinch rollers, the tapes themselves are fine and after fiddling with the cables I have no idea what could be causing this. Do you reckon I've gotten a cheap product in regards to the sound card? I would get a mixer but as space is a premium I'd like to be able to record as is currently, with just the sound card, cables and deck. Appreciate all your help, thanks.
Don't worry. We all do things like that. Recently I spent five minutes trying to work out why there was no sound on Youtube. The volume on my computer speakers (actually a Sony Mega Bass Boombox hidden behind my monitor) was turned down to zero.
Let us know how that works out, I was wondering a way to go the other direction and have it sound half-way decent. I don't know much about the quality of laptop audio going out to a stereo, or even an FM broadcasting unit but I'd like to get something to light up my boxes.
Hi Mister X, was about to do some experiments with recording onto some tapes from my laptop today. I'll keep you updated! The sound card is surprisingly good, the audio coming from the deck is being recorded very nicely.
Hi Walkman Archive, love your website... It was this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sabrent-Ex...9Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU= Been working a treat so far.
hahah I already had a few questions to pose..glad you worked it out. Yeah Walkman Archive is a great place! - Many friendly, mature people here.
Thanks for the compliments! Regarding that usb sound card, maybe I have prejudices but for 6 pounds it doesn't look like something really better than the embedded sound card in a laptop, isn't it? I know that I can be biased, I know...
Hi, in all honesty it is probably about the same quality but my laptop doesn't have any dedicated line in (I'm not sure if I can set the headphone output to be a line in like you can apparently do on some Macs)
Should add that the USB sound card does actually provide a much nicer sound than my laptop's own sound card, funnily enough. It's a 2017 HP Pavilion but this external card sounds very nice with my MDR-XB550AP, it's more of a bass-oriented headphone but gives very nice midrange too. I'm going to save a bit for a nicer hi-res set of headphones though, WH1000XM3 is what I have my eyes on. I wish there was a wired version of it but I understand some things simply aren't possible in wired vs. wireless, and vice versa.
As for the jack, take a look at the symbol next to it. If it's not just for headphones, there'll be a combi-icon/headset. My laptop (a ThinkPad E570, came as standard so I didn't have to select that in the configurator) has that for example. If you're still not sure, just try connecting a headset and see if Windows can recognize it as a microphone under devices, if it does, then select it and try to do an audio recording with Audacity to be entirely sure.
Hi Sly, I will give this a go as I have not tried doing so before. It's a near £1000 Pavillion so I'd hope that it would have that functionality. The sound card actually outputs more crisp sound than the laptop's sound card in my opinion so perhaps they cheaped out on audio components in favour of better processors, a nice graphics chip etc. Thanks for the shout
@stereomecha99 You're welcome! On another note, black audio jacks on computers might sometimes be that combination/both if there are no icons. Usually mic is pink-ish, while headphone/speaker jack is green after all. Unless the product designer decided "naaaah" on this colour convention, which would be... a questionable choice... then that might be the hint.
