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Today a friend of mine found out accidentally, when testing a few different microphones that the NC10’s input is actually stereo. Naturally with a bit of tweeking it is possible to make the input sound good and not like an old tape you’ve had lying around your house since the late 60’s. The HD Audio drivers try to compensate for that hiss by enabling by default, echo cancelation and noise suppression but well, that unfortunately breaks the stereo thing so that’s no good.
If you like that sort of thing well that’s OK but if you don’t and wanted a line in on your NC10 like we used to have back in the mid 90’s on almost every laptop on the market at that time, turn off your micboost under volume control >properties >advanced controls, set your record volume to about 7% and if you’re really good, you can get the signal to noise down to about -70 DB. Depending of course, on your equipment and whether the NC10 is plugged in or not.
With my Iriver H140, XP home, 7% volume and Iriver at max volume unplugged I got a very decent sounding recording using Sound forge quite happily.
When I need to use skype or some other VOIP-style service, I can either plug in a half-decent mic since the internal one well… Anyway, turn the volume back to 100%, turn on the 20 DB boost again and that’s that. got a mic back.
Hopefully that’s useful to someone out there, it sure is to me.
I record a lot of audio and it’s one less thing to lug around with me if I don’t need to carry an external USB sound card as well as the NC10 and everything else as well.I tested this stereo thing with a Toshiba Satellite Pro L100 which has a Conexant HD Audio card in it and it wasn’t in stereo. At first I thought it was an HD Audio trate but apparently not. So just one more reason why the NC10 comes out on top, yet again.
Welcome to the forum Andre, and thanks for such a useful first post.
I hadn’t thought of using the NC10 for music recording before but I guess if it’s capable then using your tips it’ll be a great portable recording device.
a man with not only an NC10 but an iriver ihp-140. legend. Hi Andre. Not sure i understnad everything you wrote and i cant stop for long right now as i am tweaking my NC 10 using the forum. May be coming back to this post though. I have had two h140s. Second bought by chance after first one was claimed by the sea – the smile on my face when the malay dealer asked if there was anything else he could sell me – i said ‘i wish’ – and then the genie appeared with his very last one at a very good dsicount price.
The NC10 indeed has a stereo input on the microphone jacket, however proper Record “Line in” is “not supported” when Recording or processing Wave files or MP3 files using Audigy or another Audio Recording/Editing Application. (The Realtek mixer comes up as soon as you plug a 3.5mm stereo plug into the Mic socket)
The Mic allows you to control the input of stereo line signals using the “Stereo Mix”, but this is not the same “Record Line in”. Other Netbooks like Lenovo with same Realtek Soundchip support Line-in
I raised this as a problem with Samsung UK Product Support who said they will forward this to headoffice to consider making a driver availlable (no promises) They also suggested I look around for 3rd party application which could provide functionality I needed.
Does anybody know a hack (regedit?) to enable the Realtek “Record Line In” mixer on the NC10? Having to lug around a USB Sound module is a real pain
Jan
It must be different based on the drivers you use then, because for me, the realtek mixer does not bother showing up at all. This is with the Samsung Realtek drivers installed, not the default ones from Realtek themselves.
It can detect a standard 3.5 MM microphone based on I guess, the type of jack used. When I plugged in some binaural microphones or my Iriver for example, the socket did switch from mono to stereo.
Admittedly it still showed up as microphone but no big deal really. Simply turn off mic boost, set the volume to about 7 percent and you have a relatively clean stereo input.
I don’t find myself needing to cary a separate sound card, though I have a few.
Can record in stereo, use fideliphone and bring content into the Netbook in Forge or Audacity in stereo without any fuss.Perhaps we can discuss this in the IRc channel where you will find me most often.
http://andrelouis.com/irc
Choose the #SamsungNCXX channel and look for Onj.
Otherwise a client of your choice. point to irc.andrelouis.com and same applies.Andre, you probably need to enable this as follows; goto start – control – Realtek HD soundeffect
now select audiio io – next to the word “analog” click on the radiobutton icon connector settings. a popup menu should appear where you can enable ” enable popup dialog when device is plugged in” whenever you now plug in a connector in the mic socket the Realtek audio menu should appear. Now try to select “line in” and you get error “device not supported” JanJust the answer I was looking for – thanks. One of the important uses of my NC10 and my larger laptop is music recording and I have just bough a little Sony stereo mic on eBay.
Hi. Not really sure about the Sony mics these days, I had an ECM something or other back in about 2002 and don’t really miss it if I’m honest. As single-point mics go it wasn’t very nice, so I can only hope they’ve improved for your sake. If you’re using the default NC10 drivers for the sound card, then it should automatically pick up on the input and act accordingly. If you can find a patch cable, maybe try plugging the output of your phone, mp3 player etc, into the NC10 and of course, be sure to turn off mic boost and turn the recording volume down to around 7 or so percent, and see if it is stereo then.
Maybe the mic you bought is stereo, but not having a particularly wide field, is actually just hard to tell.
Feel free to send me a recording of it if you like.
Also, what are you recording with on the NC10? Did you make sure it was recording in stereo to start with?I don’t wish to make out that you’re a fool by any means, but that’s something very simple to overlook by mistake.
Please don’t think I’m trying to patronise you. I just hope it isn’t sound recorder. lolI must give it a go, thanks for this post, I play harmonica and have a special harmonica mic, would be interesting to see how it works.
Fifi
Thank you, Andre, for taking the trouble to reply.
The mic, a Sony ECM-DS70P, works fine with my “big” laptop, so I am happy with that. Now that I have 2 laptops, I thought it would be good to use both simultaneously when recording my church choir, belt and braces. I normally do this by simply plugging into the church Yamaha mixer and the results are not outstanding, but satisfactory.
I do have a proper “rig” of mic stand with boom, a pair of Audio Technica condenser mics, but it is not appropriate to have this set up in full view during services.
If you are interested, we recently sang Mendelssohn’s “Hear my prayer” and a download link to an mp3 of the recording can be found at http://www.spaldingchurches.org.
I know people that could help with recommendations for audio equipment, not limited to myself. If you want, need, or require help, or just want to talk tech with somebody, hit me up on msn or email or something. It would be interesting to find yet more ways of using the NC to record decent quality audio.
MSN and mail: Andre@AndreLouis.COM
CheersI should have added that when using the Sony mic with my “big” laptop, I was not going in through the mic jack but through a Creative Express sound card. That most definitely has a stereo input which switches on demand between mic, line and SPDIF.
I have also bought a Tascam USB (US-122L) audio interface to use with the HC10 but as someone says elsewhere in this thread, it is something else to carry around. It would just be very handy to be able, on occasion, to carry just the NC10 and the Sony mic with maybe a suitable cable.
When I remember what we used to hump around! With respect, I might add that I spent the last 30 years of my working life in the professional recording world. Does the name Scully ring any bells?
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