I recently bought a $20 tape to mp3 converter from Walmart.com
and it came with Audacity 1.2.6 which I got to work fine. But when I
upgraded to Audacity 2.2.1 I couldn’t get it to record a tape.
The instructions that came with the version 1.2.6 said to
install the program and then launch it. Then you go to
Edit-Preferences and set recording device to be “USB Audio Device”,
and channels to “2(Stereo)”. And then select “Software Play through
(Play new track while recording it)”. I did all that and the
program didn’t record anything. I checked the tape through the
headphone jack on the converter and it was playing all right. I
also tried finish recording side B of a tape with 1.2.6 after that
and then I couldn’t get it to record. I’m running Windows 10 on a
1 1/2 year old pc. Any ideas?
Ignore those instructions - they are many years out of date.
If you installed Audacity 2.2.1 using the recommended “EXE” installer, you will have the current user manual available from the Help menu.
The USB device should be connected to the computer (and turned on if it has an on/off switch) before you start Audacity. Then you can select the USB device as the recording device in the device toolbar. The playback device should be set to your computer’s normal sound card.
There’s a bunch of related tutorials in the manual here: Tutorial - Copying tapes, LPs or MiniDiscs to CD - Audacity Manual
To find them in the manual that is installed on your computer, open the manual, and search the front page for “Copying tapes” (without the quotes).
Well it turns out that I’ve done what you suggested. I’ve looked in the Manual and set all the right settings in the software.But no go. Do you think it could be the tape-to-mp3 converter I’m using?