Hi -
I am new to the world of podcasting and I am trying to record some stuff directly into Audacity. I am certainly not a tech wiz, but i think I can hold my own in general in tech stuff. That said, I am completely stumped and beyond frustrated with this.
I got a new mic with XLR plug, and I got a Zoom H5 recorder which also doubles as a USB interface for audio. The recorder works great as a standalone recorder, but I cannot for the life of me get it to work as a USB interface. I have the H5 plugged into my USB port on my computer (Mac OS X 10.11.2), mic plugged into the H5. When turning the H5 on when plugged into the computer, it asks if I want it to act as an SD Card Reader (i.e. to transfer recordings from the SD card to the computer), or as an audio interface. I select audio interface. The computer recognizes the H5 as an audio interface. I go to System Preferences, then Sound, and I see the H5 unit popping up in both the Output and Input Menus. When I am in the input menu, I select the H5 as the input and I see that the computer is accepting audio from the mic, because when I speak into the mic, the Input level jumps. When i tap the mic, the input level jumps. So my computer is definitely recognizing the audio input from my mic.
But when I go into Audacity (2.1.3), no matter what I do, the application does not seem to recognize any of the audio coming from the mic. On the Device Toolbar on Audacity, I have “H5” selected as my recording device, not the Built-In Microphone which is the other option. Am I crazy??? What am I missing? the other settings I have on the Device Toolbar are “Core Audio” for the Audio Host, 1 (mono recording channel) and “Built-in Output” for my playback device.
Does anyone have any ideas why this would be or how to fix this? Thanks soooooo much!!