Needle down not detected

[rneal]

For the first 20 albums or so, the needle down detection worked perfectly with the default settings.

Then it randomly stopped detecting needle down and only started recording after two or three seconds into playback. This happens about half the time.

Tried lowering the needle down level, didn't work.

Turning it off and back on and resetting to defaults seems to fix it for a bit, but not always on the first try and it still goes back to not detecting after a while.

The turntable is an AT LP120USB. The PC is a Lenovo T430 with an i5-3320M with 8gb. Everything else works perfectly and there aren't  any performance issues.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

Hmmm, strange.  Can you try this please and report back?

1. Uncheck Wait For Needle Down.

2.  Start a record playing (wait for the music to start).

3.  Click Record while watching the recording level indicators like a hawk.

4.  Let me know if they start moving immediately (and if not, how long before they do.

Many thanks.

[rneal]

Will do tomorrow. Thanks.

[rneal]

Ok, did the test, several times. In every case, the record level meters showed sound immediately after clicking record, no delay.

[rneal]

Another clue.

It happened again just now. Instead of stopping and starting over, I raised the needle, at which point it started the needle up timeout countdown, I lowered the needle back at the beginning and it started recording.

[rneal]

One more clue.

I have monitor turned off, and have the usb line in set as the "listen to" device so I can playback when not recording.

When the needle down detection fails, I can hear the music fine but there's no reading on the record levels.

[rneal]

P.S. if nobody else is reporting this please don't wast a lot of time investigating.  Could be a hardware problem of some sort. Especially since it's intermittent. 

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

OK.

> When the needle down detection fails, I can hear the music fine but there's no reading on the record levels.

That's the issue, no idea why it's happening though, sorry, some Windows thing it must be, seems to be a one-off (as of yet), so if you ever do find out...