distortion when recording

[jconrod]

I've just installed CE2K with the Studio plug-in on an IBM laptop running Win2k. I'm using a Digigram VXPocket v2 soundcard. I have a CD player hooked up to the soundcard. When I play the CD the CE vu meters do not indicate that the audio is too hot, but it sounds distorted. I lowered the input by decreasing the analog input in the soundcard's mixer window. Now the soundcard's vu meter shows very low levels, and the CE vu meter shows peaks of -15. However, when I listen to the audio, it still sounds distorted. When I look at the waveform of the recording, I see that the tops of the peaks and the bottoms of the valleys are flat -- indicating distortion.

Any ideas as to why the recording is distorted even though both the soundcard and the Cool Edit vu meters show good (if not too low!) levels?

Thanks.

--Jeff