mhWaveEditor VU meter needle not moving (Solved)

Audio editors, music players, video players, burning software, etc.
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nubc
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#16 Post by nubc »

@mikeb
In the first screen, you show only mic. If you use your right arrow you will find more options are available offscreen. I bet that "Capture" is way off to the right, off-screen. Now are you saying that you change the ALSA mode to All in order to use PCM? In other words you are not staying in Capture mode to do a recording, but are using options from other ALSA modes? Can I use any ALSA mode to do this recording? I was under the impression that for recording I had to be in Capture mode.

I am looking at ALSA in yet another computer with a Creative PCI sound card. There are two options in Capture mode: "3D Center" and "Capture". There is a notation for "L / R CAPTURE" on the "Mic" option, but the "Mic" option does not have a vertical space for volume adjustment, meaning "Mic" is not available in Capture mode, in my opinion. "Mic" is available in All mode, with "L / R CAPTURE" notation (red). And "Mic" is available in Playback mode, with no L / R CAPTURE notation. Which can I use for recording, if any?

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nubc
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#17 Post by nubc »

I guess it helps to physically connect speaker out with line in or mic using an audio connector, because now I am seeing the needles move. Kinda inexact since the sliders on Record gui have no numerical value. The option I used, Line in, was available in All mode, not Capture mode. I guess I can do this now, but there was a glitch at the end: The primary gui wants me to save some changes, and there is a graphical representation of the track frozen in its window. I dont know what this is about, but I already saved the desired file elsewhere. Anyway, when I saved this data from the primary gui, the computer froze up, had to restart X. Whuddat?

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nubc
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#18 Post by nubc »

I am also curious about adjusting for maximum volume without heavy clipping. Is this maximum possible volume a constant, achieved by adjusting the ALSA option (Line IN) along with Master Volume on Record gui's mixer? Or is there a way to tweak more volume out of the recording without heavy clipping? What is accomplished by clicking the button named "Reset max peaks" on Record gui?

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Flash
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#19 Post by Flash »

Okay, so I guess you connected the speaker output to Line in and now mhWaveEdit's VU meters wiggle. :D

The "Reset max peaks" button only resets the max peak number located under the VU meters. Max peak is how close the signal has come to clipping (100%). Once the max peak number hits 100%, you cannot tell if further clipping is taking place until you reset it. Hence the "Reset max peaks" button.

Here's how to get maximum volume without clipping: set the sound levels to a level that will not cause the max peaks indicator to hit 100% anywhere in the file. It doesn't matter if the resulting max peak is only 80%, because after the entire file is captured, you're going to go to Effects and choose Normalize. Normalize makes two scans. The first scan finds the maximum peak in the file. Say it's 80% Then a number is calculated which when multiplied by the maximum peak increases the maximum peak to 100%. If the max peak was only 80%, the multiplier would be 1.25. The second scan multiplies every sample in the file by that same multiplier, increasing the level of the whole file to what it would have been if you'd managed to set the input to the perfect level to begin with. Normalizing is theoretically not as good as setting your input level so that the maximum peak just reaches 100%, but that's not feasible unless you have the time to make multiple tries, and you can't tell the difference anyway.

Also I would say that I have found a small amount of clipping is not noticeable, so if you have to clip a few peaks in order to bring the rest of the file up to audible levels, go ahead and do it. :)

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nubc
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#20 Post by nubc »

1. Will I get less static in playback if I record Mic instead of Line?

2. File size is either too much or too little. For example, 5 minutes of 16-bit stereo is 63 MB, 5 minutes of 8-bit mono is 2.5 MB. I am accustomed to file sizes of 4 MB to 11 MB. [Oops, my bad, this range applies to files containing both audio and video.] When I convert the WAV file to mp3, will the file size change significantly? What about Precord, will it make a different size file?

3. What is the data that is being generated by the primary gui? At present, I am ignoring this data, keeping only what the Record gui produces.

MikeMT
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#21 Post by MikeMT »

Maybe this will help someone.
I know this is marked "Solved", but I was having trouble getting Mwwaveedit and Precord to record. I had gone through Alsamixer several times. Then I ran across mikeb's words "To record an audio stream there would need to be a capture input usually called mix which routes the sound output back to input so it can be recorded...if you do not have such a control then it will not work." The word "mix" caught my attention. I opened Alsamixer and tabbed "Capture" and activated "Mix". Mhwaveedit and Precord both record now.

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