Adacity needs to be re-opened evry time

Audacity 3 Help Forum macOS
1

I am simply digitising old media, cassettes & CDs…works well, except everytime I finish a recording and export it to MP3, I get an error message if I clear the track and hit record for the next recoring. Error 9986 (not listed on thie site). Details:
{
“timestamp”: 1721059549,
“event_id”: “f56f45dfbbdf4b17a0e5b862fe88e662”,
“platform”: “native”,
“release”: “audacity@3.5.1”,
“contexts”: {
“os”: {
“type”: “os”,
“name”: “Macintosh”,
“version”: “10.16.0”
}
},
“exception”: {
“values”: [
{
“type”: “Error”,
“value”: “Error opening recording device.\nError code: -9986 Internal PortAudio error.”,
“mechanism”: {
“type”: “runtime_error”,
“handled”: false
}
}
]
}
}

Any ideas

2

I could not reproduce this behaviour. Using v3.5.1, I “recorded” some seconds, exported as “unnamed.wav”, deleted the track and started to record a new track - no error message.

It is not necessary to delete the first recording

  • you may save (if you think you like to make additional changes later) it after exporting - this gives you an .aup3 file (or an .aup file which needs am identically named data folder in earlier versions) or not, and then
  • just hit Command-N to record the next LP or whatever
3

I save as .mp3. Tried not deleting but hitting Comman-N…still the same result when I hit record.

4

To narrow the reason of this behaviour:

  1. Create a new user on your Mac (System settings / Users and Groups), open the padlock sign in the lower left, then click the + sign, name the user anything.
  2. Restart your Mac under the new user, open Audacity and try to reproduce the problem.

If the problem went away, there is something wrong in “your user”. If the problem still exists, it must be something in Audacity.

You did not mention the version of macOS you are using, and also not what type of Mac…

5

Thnx for all your help, but this is a long-winded and time consumming operation. It is easier just to close Audacity every time I save a recording, and start again. The error message mentions “error opening recording device”…but it works after re-opening Audacity so I will just leave it, thnx.

6

Try Transport (menu) > Rescan Audio Devices instead of quitting and relaunching.

7

What is the recording device?

8

This works…thnx, but would love to understand why…but I think I have finished all the recording (digitising) I need to do now, so probably won’t use Audacity again.

But thnx anyway

9

When you say recording device, do you mean the input device? A Super USB Cassette Capture.

10

That’s the problem. Those devices are notoriously unreliable on Mac. I’m surprised you managed to get any recording done at all.

11

No, this is not long-winded and time consuming, it’s a matter of less than 3 minutes.

And should you find out that with a new user the problem went away, then you know that it some problem in your personal user configuration - which could also affect other programs and make them behave unexpectedly.

But: your choice.

12

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