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indeepdoodoo

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Recording to Soundcard

Need some ideas.  We record a lot of live events using the Livestream procast software.  Procaster essentially allows us to do a screen capture real time of our powerpoints.  For the audio we take the output from our amp (we use a wireless lavalier mike that feeds into this amp) directly into the soundcard jack on the pc we use for the presentation.  Works great but the audio sucks.  Sounds like too much signal.  Almost as if the sound settings were set way too high.  Any ideas on how to optimize this for the highest quaility?  thanks
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blue-screen

The typical sound card expects a mic-level input.  You either need to sound card that takes line-in level and use that jack, or you need a line out to mic transformer like the one at http://www.roundalab.org/Tech-New/Matching%20Transformer.pdf in between the line-out source and the mic jack.

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Do yo think playing around with the microphone setting on the screen shot is sufficient.  it was maxed out when i first opened it up.
microphone.png
Maybe.  Some soundcards also have an "Advanced" function to turn on/off a mic boost.

http://www.spellquizzer.com/MicrophoneBoost.htm

If you can disable mic boost that may help.  You will still be stuck with an impedance mismatch, though,  That may still kill sound quality without an isolation transformer.
OK...how would you connect one of these transformer to both the laptop microphpne imnput and the little jack that plugs into the laptop?
transformer.png
Well, unless that is the sort of thing you do, you should get a pre-made one.

But, if you are already spending money you will probably get better results with a USB soundcard that is designed to take line level input, like http://www.zzounds.com/item--BEHUCA202

As a bonus, you are freed from the electrical noise of the laptop.

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coalmanski
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