Sound Blaster Live 24 bit External Calibration

Hopefully someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong here. Here's my setup, I have a Sound Blaster Live 24 bit External sound card, Windows XP Media Center, REW v4.00. I have one stereo adapter hooked into Line In and another one hooked into Front, and a RCA cable hooked to both for the loopback. On the Surrond Mixer I have the MIDI, CD Audio, Line-In/Mic-In set to mute. Enable Monitor is unchecked, REC is set to Line-In/Mic-In, and Digital Out Only is unchecked. On the EAX Settings, everything is unchecked. The problem I'm having is when I take my measurement for calibrating my sound card I get a funny looking graph which I have attached. If anyone could help point in the right direction I would appreciate it.

[brucek]

Hopefully someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong here.

You have the soundcards monitor mode turned on.

You can tell this since the graph shows a perfect mirror of your microphone calibration file. This indicates the output signal is being internally looped back the input of the soundcard.

You'll find your line-in is enabled in the Windows playback mixer.

brucek

Ok this might be a stupid question, but how do I disable the line-in in Windows playback mixer?

Is this what you are referring to by the windows playback mixer?

[brucek]

Is this what you are referring to by the windows playback mixer?

Yep. Start REW and take a look at the settings of the Playback and the Recording Mixer.

Here's a picture of mine as an example below.

The line-in should be muted in the Playback Mixer with the Wave and Volume unmuted as shown and line-in selected in the Recording Mixer.

PLAYBACK MIXER


RECORD MIXER


brucek

Brucek I have the volume control set the same as you do, but on the Recording Control I don't have a Line In. Any other ideas?

[brucek]

Select Properties in the Options pull down of the Recording Mixer and enable the line-in as shown.



brucek

[JohnM]

The SB Live 24 bit external uses the same input for mic and line, it auto switches depending on what is plugged in so that "microphone" input on the resocridng control is actually the microphone/line in input.

Ok I'm about to pull my hair out trying to figure this loopback thing out. This is what I have my windows sound card set to and the graph I'm still coming up with. Any other ideas on what would be causing this internal loopback Brucek?

[brent_s]

Milltertime, looks like to me your control panel screen captures indicate you're controlling a Conexant sound device, not a SB Live. Is that your onboard sound card? If so, that would explain why you can't find the "line in" if it doesn't have one.

-Brent

Ok I think I figured out the problem, it wasn't my settings, it was how I was doing my measurment in REW. I tried it on my desktop computer and it works fine. The problem I'm having now is on my laptop computer when I try to measure with REW, it locks up and my CPU usage for JAVA goes to 100%. Anybody ever had this problem?

[brucek]

Can you tell us why the audio device you show controlling is not the SB card but a Conexant sound device instead (as Brent asked above) ? Perhaps you don't have your onboard soundcard shut off in bios..

Ok the reason I showed screen shots of the Conexant sound device was I misunderstood what Brucek said, I thought that was the screen shots you were looking for, my bad. I looked in my Bios and I can't disable it in there, so I disabled it in the device manager. I tried it again and the REW still locks up. So next I went into the soundcard settings and ran the Check Levels just to try something different. This didn't lockup up the software, so after that worked I tried clicking on the Measure button again and followed the directions. This time the REW did not lockup, and my graph I think looks good, but I'll let you guys be the judge since I'm new to all of this. Anyway just to test the software again I restarted the software again and went into the soundcard settings again and instead of clicking on Check Levels again I tried Measure right away, and it locked up again. So I restarted again and ran Check Level first and then Measure again and everything worked fine again. Has anybody else ran into this problem? Also by me doing this is it throwing off my calibration file? Please let me know what you think of my new graphs. Thanks!!

[brucek]

Perfect. You're good to go.

No you're not harming the calibration, it's a stored file that's not written to.

Be sure to also load the SPL meter calibration file.

brucek

[Jman]

brucek wrote:

Select Properties in the Options pull down of the Recording Mixer and enable the line-in as shown.



brucek

I notice you have an Envy 24 card, is that a Chaintek av-710 sort of card? If so, does that work well with REW? I have an av-710 and a pile of old sblive cards, just waiting for my behringer mic and rolls pre so I can use REW.

[brucek]

I notice you have an Envy 24 card, is that a

I saw this card in a damaged and taped up box in a store the other day for a great price. I was previously using my ASUS RealTek onboard sound device and decided to try a seperate soundcard for fun.

The ENVY is made by VIA. It works fine.......... most any soundcard works with REW. The problems usually lie with the user, not the cards...

brucek