Hello All,

I have a question for you -


The info:

I'm doing some testing to see which way will give me better quality audio for my TV caps.

The Fusion 5 Express card that I have will capture video and audio however, the audio when capped through the Fusion seems a bit low to me plus I had a problem with hum.

I purchased a ground loop isolator - this one:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00023XDYA
and that seems to have solved the hum issue. However the audio still seems a bit low to me.
(it was that way *before* the ground loop isolator was brought into the setup and fiddling with settings just didn't seem to help much)

I purchased this audio splitter:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009JFF7K

so I could hook up the audio to my PC's on board line in.
So far, I'm liking the audio from that better.

The issue:
As long as the cable box is on (and it always is on) the audio from it plays continuously through my PC's speakers, whether I have my cap program(s) open or not. For now, I have "mute" selected in the Volume Control Input Monitor (until I resume testing again - probably shortly after I get done posting this)

The Question:
If I decide that I want to cap the audio using the Line In method, is it safe for my PC to leave the Input Monitor on mute when it's not in use?

I've only started testing with this and I'm going to do some more before I make up my mind (so far, I've only capped brief clips. I'm thinking I should probably cap a full length film for a test to make sure it stays in sync) but I want to make sure this set up won't cause some sort of damage.

The specs listed in my profile is no longer the PC I use to cap with so here's the particulars about that:

Intel Q9450 Core 2 Quad 2.66 GHz
Intel DX38BT motherboard, 1333 FSB
2 GB RAM
Windows XP Pro 64 bit SP1
eGeForce 7600GT 256MB DDR3 graphics card
3 SATA HDDs (of various sizes)
Fusion HDTV 5 Express video card

TIA for your thoughts about this.