yorkie98

Hi Zeb.

It sounds simply as if you need a different sound card for your input.
One of the major shortcomings of Realtek cards is their inputs, the levels are very hard to control, and very easy to overdrive. Also, once you do get the input level set so that it does not clip, the signal to noise level is often very poor.
I would advise using a better quality card for your input, I find that any Creative card will massvely outperform a Realtek on the inputs, you will still use the same device for your output.
You can usually pick up old Audigy cards for spare change or even something like a Soundblaster Live will do fine.
If you want to move up to an economical semi-pro card with balalnced inputs, I would suggest an E-Mu 0404.
The jacks and cables you would use will depend upon the connections from your mixer and your PC.

Paul, it may be simply that the laptop is not up to the job, also 384mb (512-128 for video) of ram is nowhere near enough, I’m suprised your OS even runs on that little, try upgrading it to 1Gb minimum, which will leave 896 for the OS which is much more like what you need nowadays. Despite this it may just simply be that the CPU cant keep up.

SO thats why the quad core, rackmount win 2K machine I built woudn’t work and I threw it in the bin.. 😉

I have one of these, most importantly, get the latest drivers and patchmix ultility from the website, this is crucial.
Once these are installed, in patchmix, simply click the little new session button near the top, go to the 192khz tab with the product default selected and click ok, this will now be outputting in 192khz mode.

The recording inputs will also be locked at 192khz so you may need to select 192 for the input in BBP but I do know there are issues around the routing of this card which make it very difficult to use it as both the line input and the mpx output card. I have never managed it myself. It may be necessary to use a different card for the line input.

An excellent tune for both dynamic range and also featuring loud Glockenspiel and piercing Xylophone is a piece of library music called "Grandstand" by the Keith Mansfield Orchestra. I now use this as my test tune as overshoots are very easy with this tune if not controlled, also it has a very full sound and great stereo field.
This may be very hard to get hold of legitamately so if you need a CD rip of this one I can send it to you.
As it’s library music, this is legal as fees only need to paid if used in a production, or broadcast.

Leif is right and also there is this common misconception that HD radio stands for "High Definition" which gives rise to an assumption that the audio quality on HD radio will be superior the FM, which is quite often not the case at all.
HD in this case actually stands for "Hybrid Digital" Radio and the bitrates used can often be very low, especially on AM. In either case though (FM or AM), a conventional FM processor is not a good fit for a low (or even medium) bitrate stream.
Many processors made by leading manufacturers nowadays offer a separate output for HD radio broadcasts and webcasts (much like the L/R output in BBP) and these most imortantly do not go through the aggressive clippers which FM broadcasts need to go through to be suitable for FM broadcast. Often completely different settings can be applied to the HD stream from the FM as the requirements and constraints are totally different between the two formats.

Try making sure you have BBP set to the optimal setting on the CPU, which is Maximum. The CPU settings do carry a risk of overshoots if set to lower settings. The usual reason for unexplained overshoots is still poor tilt calibration. I notice you say you have set the tilt but did you do it using a tilt figure given on the forum for your soundcard, or did you use the calibration utility to calibrate?