HELP! MC3 Line-in recording!

Your message has me confused. are you saying that you can only RECORD in MC using MIC IN and NOT line in? And that you can HEAR your guitar thru the line in, but can't RECORD that way? Your message didn't really SAY that, I'm guessing that's what you mean. You also didn't give us any information about your equipment (especially your sound card).

If so, it should be a simple matter of some settings on your MC. First, check in OPTIONS>AUDIO>DRIVERS and make sure that your sound card's LINE IN is selected in the INPUTS section. If it IS selected, then you need to go to your TRACK view and verify that your INPUT to your AUDIO track states that you want to record from the LINE IN of your sound card and NOT from the MIC in.

Your sound card is an onboard motherboard card which shares the resources of the RAM and PCI bus and processor. Once you get the inputs recording you're most likely going to have latency associated with this card...but that's another subject.

If the line input is not showing up in the input for MC, I'm not sure how to force it to look for it. you could try using a different driver type, but I'm not sure that will solve the problem. Go to OPTIONS>AUDIO>ADVANCED and look at the section called PLAYBACK AND RECORDING>DRIVER MODE. You are probably using MME - change it to WDM and see if that helps, but honestly I have doubts that it will help with this problem. You'll need to run the WAVE PROFILER AGAIN and will have to restart MC.

I have recently talked to someone else who had an onboard sound card which could not get the line in to work. He could record using the mic in, but that doesn't do him any good with a bass. We tried several things including the things that I've told you above and nothing worked. the last thing he was going to try was to go buy a cheap SB card from Wally world or BB. I'm not saying that your on board card won't do what you need it to...there may be others here on this forum that could get it to work for you where I can't.

Having said that, on board sound cards are NOT ideal for DAW work anyway. For that matter, neither are *cheap* or SB cards for that matter (for what he wanted to do - a cheap card suits his purpose).

You can get a cheap Sound Blaster card for ~$30 (you might could find one for less). If that will suit your purpose, and you can't get the on board card to work, then go for it.

If you are wanting a little more quality out of your recordings, you'll need to step up to something along the lines of $100-$200 depending on your needs.

I'll give you more info on those if you want, but right now you asked about cheap ones and the cheapest SB card should answer that for you.

Go to the start/ control panel and find sound and audio devices, then go to audio and volume make sure that the line in is not muted.

Hey gang how are you all doing?? I have some input on this subject. I had the same type of problem, and the same onboard soundcard/AC97. I went out and purchased a the Sound Blaster Live 24 Bit External Sound Card. I have had zero troubles like you are describing since I hooked the new sound card up. I also would like to share with some of you, that you might want to check into the sound blaster thing a bit more, before rating it as a low end recording card . After a few basic bugs that you guys helped me work out(thanks), I have been able to put out some very high quality recordings/cds using the SB live external card. I am not looking for any type of arguement from anyone, I just don't want you people to have to spend all of this extra dough on another type of high end sound card if you can get away with it for much cheaper. I spent $50 for the SB live 24 bit card. Like I said no arguement intended here, just sharing what I have learned so far.
Take it easy,
Jim

The 24 bit SB cards are very decent and a cut above anything that comes in a computer these days, loads of people use them, and there are some obvious advantages, like the ability to load a nice set of sound fonts into them. but if you ever go with a top Prosumer card you will hear the difference. the E-MU stuff is quite frankly built by a company owned by Sound Blaster. The issue with the SB cards is that they do not put their best convertors in the SB cards, and they do not have top notch PreAmps, but again for the money they will give you some very nice results.

Sure it will work.

Go with the Sound blaster card, the other one has no track record in recording. I will say if this is the budget right now, then get the SB, if you can save a bit longer wait and get either a M-Audio 2/96 or a E-MU 0404 both are at musicians friend for $99 and are very solid and will take you to the next level and not need upgrade for a long time.