Resolved Distorted capture in Audacity

I got a ITUT201 USB Turntable for Christmas (its cool!) and have been recording some of my old albums to convert to MP3 so I can listen to them at work.

My problem is about 40 percent of the time the recordings (captures) are distorted as thought the volume was extremely high yet no changes were made from previous captures.

Does anyone have any idea how I can correct this?

The mic is USB Codec (from the turntable) and its volume is set to about 15, The input in audacity is set just to the left if center.

I may get a good capture from one song on an album and a distorted one from the same album.

I'm lost - I know very little about sound mixing, capture, etc.

Mitch

 

Try updating to Audacity 1.3 Beta: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/beta_windows
Note: This is the first version to also work with Windows 7
(official release of 2.0 is pending)

On the same webpage as above there is also:

Optional Downloads

• LADSPA plug-ins 0.4.15 installer (.exe file, 1.5 MB) - over 90 plug-ins.
• Plug-Ins - Download additional effects and filters.
• LAME MP3 encoder - Allows Audacity to export MP3 files.
• FFmpeg import/export library - Allows Audacity to import and export many additional audio formats such as AC3, AMR(NB), M4A and WMA, and to import audio from video files.

I'd say download and update them all, it may help, since they are updates

 

Kimsland, I was using 1.2.6 and updated to the beta with the same result. Haven't downloaded a lot of the plugins since I am really a novice at this and wouldn't know how to use them.

Tony, I'll switch to the front USB ports and try that. I'll let you know how I fair.

 

TonyT, You are awesome! Switching to the front USB ports seems to have fixed the distortion problem.

Kinmland, now that the distortion is gone I can experiment with the plugins and effects.