I'm REALLY new... Is this the right place?

[garyt]

I've used PCs, and developed applications, for more than ten years. But I have never done ANY audio recording, and the Audacity opening screen leaves me baffled. What I need are simple, step-by-step instructions -- from the very first key stroke. Are you folks patient and tolerant enough to help that way? ... or is there something you have available, or can recommend, that would give me what I need? (P.S. - The Audacity Help seems full of useful information, but almost none of it tells me how to get started from the very, very beginning.)
What I want to do seems simple enough to me (but maybe it's really unusual?): I want to record stereo (mostly music) coming into the microphone input jack of my laptop and export it as MP3 files for playing on my PDA, my laptop, my desktop, etc.
Can you folks help?

-- garyt

[paul999]

Welcome! Yes this is the right site. The people here are great. I don't use audacity but go to the solve technical issues part of the forum and look in the audacity folder I bet you'll find it there.

Cheers

[fortyseven]

hello and welcome to the forums, gary. you have found a very useful place if its audio recording advice you're after. as paul999 said, scan through the audacity section of this forum and Im sure you will get some of your questions answered.
i have found that the audacity website has a lot of useful information under their FAQ's; i recommend checking it out.
when you say you want to record music, are you a musician wanting to record yourself playing an instrument or singing or are you wanting to convert old vinyl or cassette to a digital format?

[garyt]

Thanks for the reply, ... and for the welcome!

No, I'm not a musician, but there's hours and hours of beautiful music of many types that I would like to have stored -- or available for storage -- on my PDA as MP3 files. One way or another, I can get the music I want into my trusty old Sony stereo Receiver/ampllifier. From there, I have shielded stereo cables with the necessary plugs and adapters to get from either the headphone jack or the Tape Out RCA jacks on the amplifier to the 3.5 mm stereo "mic" input jack on my wife's laptop computer (which has no "line-in" jack or anything that seems equivalent).

OK. I get everything plugged in, and I open Audacity. So what do I do first? What settings do I need to tweak, and where do I find them? How to I get a display that will tell me if I'm getting clipping because the input levels are too high? ... and so on. When I try to muddle through, using what seems like 'common sense', it's clear that things just aren't making sense.

From all I've heard, Audacity should handle this fairly easily. I just can't figure out how to make it happen.

-- garyt

[TonyB]

Welcome aboard! You found the right place.

Gary and Fortyseven are good dudes no matter what you heard about them.

[Zeekle]

Hi Gary - I've just completed what you want to do in Audacity - but I recorded a rough demo from my drum machine (with guitar input) straight onto the lap top.

Basicly you connect your cables Source out to laptop in (mic in for you?) you click on the Red record button and then start your sound source.

Now I may be mistaken here but from your input choice, you may find you can only record a mono track (I used a line in and all I can get is a mono track recorded)

I use Audacity on my PC in my studio and it has a stereo input and I can get a stereo track recorded on that so its not impossible, but I think Audacity decides.

When you have got your source recorded in Audacity push Stop. You can go back to the start and cut the first section to get rid of excess silence.

You then go to File, eport as mp3 (you need to download the mp3 maker from the Audacity web site, its very easy)

Whaa whoo - you have your mp3.

You can boost the recording using the amplify tool - normalise your file etc etc.... for a free program Audacity is extremely versatile

Hope that helps
Zeek

[fortyseven]

Read this: Audacity: How do I record from vinyl records, cassette tapes, or minidiscs?

...and this: Transferring tapes and records to computer or CD - Audacity Wiki

...and finally this: Audacity: How do I download and install the LAME MP3 encoder?