Old audacity for model GE4052

Hi - about 2 years ago i bought a Digitech usb cassette machine JW 51SWG (GE4052). i only opened it yesterday to find a slip of paper saying download a guide, but it doesn’t exist anymore, and i can’t find it on the audacity site. Can anyone tell me how i can make the machine work - it has no instructions at all. i plugged it into PC (Wiindows 7 and tried son’s Windows XP) and it registered as new hardware but then nothing, and i can’t find it as a device anywhere either. Any help appreciated, thanks.

These in general are not super magic. Chances are it registered itself as a plain “USB Audio Device” rather than calling out the model number. Did Windows complain that it couldn’t figure out what to do?

Try plugging it in and then launch Audacity. See if the device toolbar can find it.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Device_Toolbar

Do not plug this stuff in and turn on in the wrong order.

Koz

thanks - that is the first bit of help - i didn’t even realise i had to download anything from audacity! so i did, and i get the message error while opening sound device. please check the input device settings and project sample rate. i have no idea what that means, but now you’ve told me i needed to download the stuff, i will look around in the help and see if i can find anything that will make the PnP device talk to my computer via audacity (i assume that’s what i’m aiming at?) is it also possible that what i have downloaded could be too “new” for my 2 year old device, or are they backwards compatible? thanks

I can’t see where a plain USB player should be particularly exotic, and I think you’re using the phrase “download” in a funny way. You shouldn’t have to find additional software on the internet (download) to get this to work.

Sometimes we call it “capturing” a performance from the cassette player.

Plug in the device with Audacity closed. Windows should announce it found new USB hardware and register it. This is where you get error messages if there is something serious wrong.

Then start Audacity and click on the device toolbar to see if you can find anything with “USB” in the title. Also select Stereo.

You may need to go into Audacity > Preferences > Quality and set for 44100, 16-bit.

Koz

The current version of Audacity is 2.0 and it’s available here: Audacity ® | Downloads
There’s a tutorial for USB turntables, much of which also applies to USB cassette players: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Recording_with_USB_turntables

Audacity is not associated with Digitech in any way. Many manufacturers recommend using Audacity but Audacity is an independent open source project.