🚀 go-pugleaf

I seriously doubt that this has the slightest thing to do with the hard drive. More likely what happened was that the sound card was damaged or fried while the surgery was being performed. What you're seeing is a massive DC offset, meaning that your sound input is perceiving a continuous current, whether actual or not.

You're better off to go purchase a USB sound interface and plug the MiniDisc into it -- you'll have better sound quality anyway.

Your best bet is to find a way to transfer your MiniDisc files as data into the computer, whether as files or over a SPDIF digital audio connection.

Hello MusicConductor

Thank you for taking time to respond to my inquiry. I doubt if the sound card was damaged, but I will check that. The person who installed the new Hard Drive is a very good friend of mine. Is there anything that might cause a DC offset apart from a damaged sound card? Surely I should be able to get Adobe Audition to function on my new Hard Drive the same way that it did on the old one without needing a USB sound interface? What is a SPDIF digital audio connection?

Thank you again for replying.

George

Link describing dc offset:

 <http://www.harmony-central.com/articles/tips/eq_dc_offset/>

      The person who installed the new Hard Drive is a very good friend of mine.




My wife is a very good friend of mine, but she's the last person I'd get to install a HD!

      Is there anything that might cause a DC offset apart from a damaged sound
      card?




A damaged MD recorder could do this as well, but I agree with MusicConductor - sound card damage is by far and away the most likely cause. But...

      I am only able to bring the recording onto the horizontal centre line
      by dropping the recording level to almost zero. When this happens there
      is virtually no sound in Adobe.




If, when the input level is reduced to zero, the flat line is at the centre of the screen and only shifts when you increase the level, it may well be the MD. The way to tell is to unplug the MD recorder and then increase the input level. If the line shifts without the MD being connected, then it's not implicated directly. But if it shifts as the level is increased with nothing connected, then your sound device has been damaged.

Hello SteveG

Thanks for your note. I appreciate your advice. My friend, who installed the new Hard Drive, is a computer expert. He has been building PCs for years. I have been trying to call him over the past few hours to ask about the possibility of damage to the sound card. I can say definitely that the fault is NOT with the minidisk recorder. I have 5-6 Sony MZ-NH900 recorders and have tried two of them. The problem occurs when I use both to input sound. I will try some of the others just to make absolutely sure that it is not the MD.

So it is probably the sound card? Well at least that should not be too difficult to repair.

Thank you again.

George

In Device Properties, Wave In, have you ticked "adjust DC offset while Recording"?

Hello Wild Duck

You are a genius. Many thanks for your advice. Adobe Audition 1.0 is now working okay again for me. I am very grateful.

Can I be bold and ask you another question. When I play a recording into Adobe with my MD unit there is no sound at all. I cannot get the sound to come through when recording in Adobe. However, on playback in Adobe the sound is fine. Is there a possible explanation for this?

Thank you again.

George

I think with your laptop the easiest way to listen to the MD as it is recording into AA is just to fade up Line In in the Windows playback mixer rather than try to monitor through Audition. You will need to make sure that you have the recording mixer set to line in and nothing else, as I think on some machines the Windows recording mixer effectively controls a selector and others a mixer.

Wild Duck

Thank you again. Where do I find the Windows playback mixer and recording mixer? Is it in Sounds and Audio Devices?

George

      Hello Wild Duck





      You are a genius.




He may well be (hehe!) - but I have to say that if you are getting an offset that large without correction, your sound card is still faulty. Even though you can correct the baseline in Audition, if it's that far out on a fully zoomed-out display, then you are losing significant dynamic range - the excursions available in one direction will considerably exceed those in the other, and it's the minimum side that will then determine where clipping occurs; and this will be at a somewhat lower level than it should be.

Generally an offset of that degree indicates that something's seriously wrong with the input circuitry of the card itself, and the card is very likely to be significantly underperforming anyway, so I'd still get it checked out carefully - or better still, replaced with a known-good one.

Look at <http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b7ae60/8> where I typed in a whole lot of stuff about the Windows Mixer in XP. Most of this applies to AA 1.5 as that uses wdm drivers anyway.

I assume that your 'soundcard' is actually the on board sound on the laptop. You don't say what make the laptop is, but I've seen a very similar problem on an HP desktop. When I rang support there was no meeting of the minds ie they didn't understand what I was talking about. My advice to that user then was the same as SteveG suggests - get a different soundcard. With a laptop, I'd suggest a decent usb device from a known manufacturer of audio interface devices, but be very careful of Creative. Leave the existing soundcard activated so that you can switch to that for casual listening.