Thread: Recording with Audacity

I have an Asus F3F notebook PC running Vista home Premium Service Pack 1 with a built-in web earn and microphone. I want to transfer some old tapes to CD using Audacity from a tape deck through the microphone jack (which doubles as a S/PDIF output).

When I connect the system up I cannot get it to record through the mic jack, the only sound picked up is from the built-in web earn mic.

I have tried uninstalling and re-installing the sound drivers (Sigmatel High Definition Audio), the Device Manager reports devices as working properly but still no joy using the external mic socket. I've also tried generic audio drivers but the result is the same.

Audacity is quite capable of recording from any of the inputs on the computer but you will need to tell it which one to use. In the tool bar of Audacity is a dropdown menu box that in your case will probably say Microphone. Click on the down arrow and select Line In.

To make sure that the right option is selected, connect the tape deck to the line-in socket (normally coloured blue) and start playing some music. Once the dropdown menu has been changed, click on the down arrow next to the picture of a microphone and select Monitor input. Two red lines should appear in the bars above the picture showing the audio is being received.