interface input activation

I’ve succesfully installed audacity on a Mac but I can’t record from more than one input at a time from my interface. I’m trying to find out how to record multiple tracks from mutiple inputs at once.

It’s to record a live drum kit so I need to record from several inputs to several individual tracks simultaneously.

I’ve seen it done with the interface I have on a pc using a sony based recording program.

I’m using a Focusrite saffire pro 26 i/o interface and my Mac is running on operating system V 10.4.11, 800MHz Power PC G4, 512Mb SD RAM.
I’m using Audacity macosx-ub-1.3.14.dmg.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Audacity can only record from one device at a time. However, on Macs (or at least on some Macs) it is possible to create an “aggregate device” which in effect combines multiple sound cards into one virtual device. Audacity can then use that aggregate device as the (one) recording device. (sorry I can’t give precise steps as I don’t have a Mac).

I’m a complete novice at this recording lark so please excuse my ignorance,

So what I’m trying to do is record through a single device that has 8 mic inputs and I want to assign each one of those channels to individual tracks on Audacity and use them simultaneously to record a drum kit, but your saying you can’t do this with Audacity, correct?

No, what I’m saying is that you CAN do that, but only as long as Audacity sees the device as ONE device with multiple inputs.
Sorry that I can’t give details of how to do it on a Mac as I don’t use Macs.

Open Audio MIDI Setup (in the Utilities folder). Select the Audio tab. Select the Focusrite in the “Default Input” and "Properties Fo"r dropdown menus. In the Audio Input section, what are your options for “Format” (e.g. 44100 Hz, and 2ch-16bit)? Can you select 8ch-16-bit in the second menu?

– Bill