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Funky results recording in Vista

M

Mike Walker

Guest
I just got my new computer, a Dell Inspiron 531 (Athlon 64x2 5000+, 2GB RAM, 500GB hard drive), with...VISTA HOME PREMIUM! Hell, I figured I'll need to make my peace with the new OS sooner or later, so I decided on sooner.

WELL, Adobe Audition can only be coaxed to work if you right click on the icon and choose "run as administrator". Otherwise, you're unable to save files. I can deal with that. What's REALLY strange is the way Vista deals with audio. My old HP system had a mute control on the keyboard. Whenever I turned on my mic preamp, I muted the speakers to avoid feedback. Well try to get feedback with Vista. Go ahead, I DARE YOU! It doesn't seem possible. First of all, when you plug in (or turn on) a mic preamp, NOTHING COMES OUT OF THE SPEAKERS UNLESS YOU'RE IN PLAYBACK. NOTHING! You can record, but NOTHING emerges from the speakers during recording.

Then there's the record mixer in Vista. WHAT RECORD MIXER??? As far as I can tell, Vista tries to set levels on it's own. I can turn the input, and output on my mic preamp all the way down, and for most of the pots' travel Vista turns the level up! Like a VERY agressive AGC! But I still had to experiment A LOT before I found an input level that yielded clean audio. I CANNOT make Adobe Audition's meters reach 0dbfs, but I can sure as hell make the incoming audio sound distorted. WEIRD!

Anybody else getting just plain weird results recording in Vista?
 
Mike Walker said:
Anybody else getting just plain weird results recording in Vista?
Click to expand...

Well Mike, I did too until I returned the computer and got one with XP Professional. I was trying to use it with Sound Forge and it did weird things.

Even more mysterious was its inability to deal with other programs that came from Microsoft. Specifically, my copy of MS Front Page would not run properly on Vista. It is the latest version, which I use almost every day to update the station's web site. Among other things, if you did not save every page as you worked on it, it would erase the entire page from the host server when you switched between screens just to look at a different page. When you returned to the page you were working on it was gone! I had to rebuild several pages before I figured that out. The only explanation I got from Microsoft was "We've discontinued Front Page. A new program will be released soon."

That's nice, but I didn't want to buy a new program, even if it was available (which it wasn't). I just gave up. Vista has some nice features if they only worked. Maybe they do now. My experience was last spring. I just didn’t want another science project, so back it went. I have enough science fair projects already. The new computer with XP Pro works great.
 
Little by little I've solved most of my problems since my last post. I found an 18 dollar program from a small company named "Actual Solution" that returns the mixer functionality that Vista took away. It's called "Power Mixer for Vista".

Most of my stability issues have settled down as well. I haven't seen a blue screen in many days. Things are actually looking up!
 
So, would you say that most of the recording problems with Vista resulted from their reworking of the mixer function in Windows?
 
Yes SirRoxalot, I'd say the biggest obstacle is the inability to do something as simple as set record levels manually, without an add-on program. W.T.F. Microsoft? Do you guys WANT everyone who records to use a Mac? The other, more minor problem I've encountered is the inability to get Adobe Audition 2.5 under Vista to refresh the DirectX plugin list. Only one of my plugins was DirectX, however. But it's one I really loved!
 
New Vista Mixer

Mike,

Did you work much with the Vista mixer controls? I've read a little about them, but I haven't worked with them on a day-to-day basis yet.

My understanding is that the new Vista mixer doesn't just control audio for devices, but also controls audio individually for programs. If you'd like more info, check out this link:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Windows-Vista-Volume-Mixer-41882.shtml

You may also want to take a look at this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930095/en-us

I don't know if that can solve some of the previous issues that you've had without resorting to add-on software or not, but it might be worth a look.

Rox
 
Rox those are playback controls. Vista DOES offer a lot more flexibility with sounds you hear. But the RECORDING controls (audio INPUTS) are m.i.a. It attempts to do this automatically, and fails miserably.
 
Thanks Rox, but that tweak (enabling hidden devices) is one of the first things I did when I got my 'puter. Enabling "stereo mix" (or "what u hear") is of practically no use for recording audio, EXCEPT for capturing snippets of sound off the interweb ("It's a series of tubes...." WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE EUTHANIZE TED STEVENS!) Sorry, where were we? ;)
 
Mike,

Thanks for all your input. I have to update to Vista on a new laptop, and your input has given me a snapshot of some of the issues I'll be dealing with. Fortunately, I still have access to several XP systems if necessary.

Maybe I'll try installing MS Virtual PC on the Vista box and install XP in a virtual environment...

Rox
 
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