hello, i record 'demos' of songs i write acoustically. now, ive been doing this for about a year or two, and have never had an issue with this problem before. i am on a brand new laptop, a Gateway NV53 running Windows7.

whenever i record something with audacity, the recording input is SO loud its very distorted and you cant make anything out. this happens with both the built in microphone and the logitech mic ive used in the past. i try to lower the mic level in audacity, but all that does is produce the same terrible distortion at a lower volume.

why is the microphone input such terrible quality just because im on this laptop, and any ideas on what i should do to correct this??

any help is greatly appreciated.