audio codec missing

[percypineapple]

installed audacity, played a tape into the computer, it plays back. saved it to file on desktop, click on it, windows player opens, but can't play it ( mp3)as an audio codec is missing. tried to download "lame" but web site confusing. any idaes? Also, when played back on audacity, all bass quality has gone. is this usual?
thanks,
Percy.

[rojash]

You don't need Lame in order to play an mp3. Lame is used for creating (encoding them). How exactly did you go about saving it? If Audacity was happy to save it as an mp3, you must already have lame.

The only reason I can think of for poor bass quality would be if you were overloading the input of the computer. You need to experiment with the output volume of the tape recorder so that it's not so high that it overloads the input, but is high enough that you don't need to turn the recording volume up too high (to loud - clipping, not loud enough, extraneous noise).

[rojash]

If you're sure that what you've actually output from Audacity is an mp3 file, then you could try downloading and installing the K-Lite codec pack.

http://codecguide.com/download_k-lite_codec_pack_basic.htm

[bazwillrun]

I'm assuming the output from the cassette player is stereo using a stereo cable.
And that the cable was properly inserted at both ends
Did you make sure that audacity was recording a stereo signal and was recording onto both channels.

One good way to lose a lot of bass is to not have the plug fully in, meaning audacity will only be recording part of the signal

when you saved it to desktop did you make sure that it was saved as an mp3 via the save as option

[whiskeryron]

Just a thought percy. I always save Audacity as Wav with no probs give it a whirl.

WR.

[percypineapple]

Hi,
Thanks for all the answers. I am playing the tape through a stereo tape player that has a usb connection and came with audacity software. when recording finished I have gone to the "export to" and saved onto desk top. an icon comes
onto desk top, i open it and it goes to windows player, then the message appears about ddl file missing. the sound from the tape player is perfect stereo, but when replaying on audacity quality not good, sounds like one channel missing.
regards,
Percy.

[bazwillrun]

when you are monitoring the recording via audacity are both channels being recorded, is there activity on both the left and right channel indicators in Audacity. ?
To check this click on the little down arrow next to the small mic icon, this should give you a small drop down menu, select Start monitoring and you should see two horizontal reddish bars showing you the recording input levels.

To get the lame encoder go here

http://lame1.buanzo.com.ar/

you want the one under the red banner thats says
For FFMpeg/LAME on Windows:
Lame_v3.99.3_for_Windows.exe

can you let us know what .dll file it says is missing ?

[percypineapple]

Hi Baz
Message is:Codec is missing

Windows Media Player cannot play the file (or cannot play either the audio or video portion of the file) because the MP3 - MPEG Layer III (55) codec is not installed on your computer.
I just downloaded lame, but no difference.
thanks,
Percy.

[bazwillrun]

Ok , make sure you have the lame_enc.dll file in C:/windows/System32

The other thing to try is to use a different media player
VLC is totally free and one of if not the best media player out there, it plays most video and audio formats without any extra codecs needed
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html