1525 Sigmatel hell

I'm so fed up. This Dell has given me nightmare after nightmare ever since I got it last week. Now, I'm just realizing I can't even listen while I record. In fact, I can't even record! I've tried both microphone sources and line-in sources, nothing. I've tried everything, from installing different drivers, making sure all volume levels are up, nothing is muted, messing around in regedit, etc... Customer support of course said there was nothing they could do and, get this, told me it was "primitive technology" when I asked about needing to listen to what I record as it is being recorded. I basically bought this to record guitar ideas, but it's kinda hard to do that when you can't even hear what you're playing.

Seriously, is there any remedy or did I just invest $1200 in a paperweight?

 

There should be no reason you can't record through the line in jack. But listening via headphone and recording at the same time i dont think works because of copyright reasons.

 

If I go back to XP, would that remedy the problem?

 

I've realized what's happening. Whenever I record line-in (with my microphone) what ends up being recorded is audio from the built-in mic which I guess is part of the webcam (when I rub the area by the webcam I get large spikes of audio in cool edit).

So is the onboard built-in mic somehow interfering with my line-in microphone? If so, how do I fix this?

 

Can you disable that mic?

 

The Dell Webcam Center has no option to turn it off in the Audio Source Control box under Tools.

 

The problem seems to be Sigmatel blocks the update to SP1. I disabled the driver, updated to SP1 and that update installed another driver. I can now record using line-in, but I still cannot listen while recording (enabled input monitoring).

 

Note with the current driver you have, it is to my knowledge that you will not be able to hear what you record, not matter how many settings you move.

I remember reading somewhere that on some dell laptops using the LG Sigmatel driver solved the problem.

There is a second solution: buy a 1/8 splitter, a 1/8 to 1/8 cable, and a coupler, and from the guitar go directly to the headphones and the computer. Note you won't have control over the volume of the sound you hear(unless you go through an amplifier), so it might be either too low or too high.. And yes, that will look ugly on a laptop.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=254481