I have a HP 8575c pavilion. It has a cheesy microphone built into the monitor. I want to use a better one - I know this is really an ignorant question, but do I need to buy a special computer microphone or can I use one I already have, and also where do I plug the sucker in? I tried the line in to the soundcard, but that doesn’t work. I downloaded Audacity and my goal is to to mix voice and audio tracks together - use my computer as a karaoke recorder. Is this possible? I tried to record from a stereo with a karaoke function using the line in to Audacity and I get nothing. I can do this using Music Match although the quality sucks. Any help mucho appreciated. But mainly, I want a better microphone. Is any of this possible?
Any microphone with a 1/8" jack should work just fine. Your soundcard should have a dedicated Microphone jack (supposed to be a red jack) with a preamplifier meant for the weak signal from the microphone. If you’re trying to record from two sources simultaneously I’m not too sure how well that will work for you. If you can record the music, then play it back while recording vocals in synch, then mix them afterwards that would be a better bet.
As for the trouble with line-in, it’s usually muted by default to prevent noise on the outputs. The volume control app should have a mute checkbox or option for the line-in and microphone ports.