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Windows 8 and Audacity problem.


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Is anybody else having problems with Audacity or Windows sound recorder

when using Windows 8. When I listen to audio coming from sources like BBC Radio

iPlayer or Youtube directly the quality of the audio is mostly fine. The same is

true of music files I have transferred from my old machine running Vista and

listening to them on the Windows 8 machine. Windows 8 on this machine is set up for English and French keyboard.

 

However if I use Audacity or Windows 8 sound recorder to record audio being

played on the computer on playback there is a strange distortion. Not so

noticeable on speech but music sounds like it is coming from under water. I have

tried changing recording levels and sample rates but with no good result. The

same thing happens to known good recordings loaded into Audacity as a file and 

again on playback distortion. There is no question of acoustic feedback as there

is no mic on the Windows 8 machine and the distortion occurs when the speakers

are on or off during the recording. So any thoughts

anyone?.................JR
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Ok after much fiddling can now load files of music and edit and resave them with no obvious distortion. However distortion very obvious when playing back after recording streaming audio. Not too much of a problem except where you cannot download files as in BBC iPlayer radio. I notice that when recording streaming audio the slider at the top right hand side of the Audacity control panel with the loudspeaker symbol controls recording level which strikes me as being odd. The other slider with the microphone symbol does nothing but then I don't have a mic connected to this machine.........................JR
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No there are a few progs available, a banner comes up when you go to BBC iPlayer Radio, and they are talking about make downloading, I assume of all progs, available in 2014.............JR

PS The daft thing is that if I download stuff and then transfer the file to Audacity all is well but if the audio is streamed from the net or from a file stored in the computer the distortion occurs. In other words it is only recordings of sounds passing through the computer that are distorted on playback.

 

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[quote user="NormanH"]Use Linux [6]

[/quote]

Norman - Windows 8 is such a disaster area that I'd love to do just that. I've downloaded Ubuntu, and managed to get it installed - which was many times more difficult than I expected, but the so-called "dual boot" doesn't seem to work (so I have to mess around in BIOS to switch), and Ubuntu hasn't found the laptop's Wireless driver - the suggestion appears to be to download it from the internet - tricky if the problem is that you don't have a connection ....

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The dual boot worked up until Windows 8. I believe that something was changed with that version which complicated matters, but it comes from the Windows side.

I recommend making a bootable USB stick with Unetbootin  and using that rather than a CD.

You can run Ubuntu from that and then choose to install it or not.

I have Ubuntu13.04 on 2 of my computers and 13.10 on the other, and that one has a dual boot with Window7.

It is true that an ethernet connection to your box is a good idea when you first install and update, but I have never had a problem with the Wireless driver after that initial install.

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12.04 was the last Long term release and will be supported for 5 years.

I am on 13.04 BUT one one machine I am on 13.10 development version as I test things on it and it isn't my main computer.

You are right about the numbers.

13.04 was released in 2013 in the 4th month...

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As an experiment I have downloaded a trial copy of Wondershare streaming audio recorder. This does not produce the distortion that I am hearing with Windows recorder or Audacity. So I can download music with Wondershare and then transfer the file and edit with Audacity but it is strange that Wondershare works ok in Windows 8 and Audacity and Windows own recorder has this problem.................JR
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