morning, ya’ll -
first time for me here.
i built (thanks to steve) the asio build for latest audacity in hopes to record all 4 tracks of a tascam 234 i reconditioned.
bought a esi u47dj usb audio interface made for the glory days of xp, but does enjoy windows 10 limited support.
it sees the device and can record on all 4 channels, but i get drop outs and funky audio. not sure if the asio sound settings are adjustable (overridden by the device’s control panel). asio4all kinda works better, but sound is tinny (think old am radio speaker).
what settings (if any) can i set in the program? what type of settings in the asio panel help?
here is my project:
i have a tascam 234 deck i want to capture all 4 tracks in real time. so i can post process and render to mp3. these are pastor sermon cassettes.
assuming i cannot make do w/ what i have here (and resort to a mac), are there any current 4-8 channel usb input devices supported by audacity for real time multichannel recording for a reasonable price?
Check that all of your sample rates match - they should all be the same. Edit > Preferences > Audio Settings and Windows Speaker icon > Sounds > Recording > your esi usb > Properties > Advanced. If you are having the problem with 44100, try it with 48000. A mis-match between these rates and the ESI can cause the problems you are seeing. Also, if there are any enhancements specified, turn them OFF.
Other than that, there is the usual: Buffer length on the same page. Don’t run anything else at the same time (especially browsers); disconnect from the internet; reboot before recording.
Can you successfully record 2-channels? If so, you should be able to record two channels at a time, then load both “stereo” files into Audacity and time-align them for mixing.
That should NOT happen unless there is a problem on the analog side. On the digital side it’s “just data” so the only issue should be dropouts/glitches when the audio stream gets interrupted and/or when the buffer overflows.
If you are getting digital glitches or dropouts there is a FREE online book called Glitch Free about optimizing your computer for audio.
Usually digital glitches are “something else” interrupting the audio. Your operating system is multitasking even when you’re only running one application and that’s why there is a buffer.
NOTE - I’ve never used Audacity for multitracking and personally I wouldn’t bother. I’d get a multi-tracking DAW which is designed from the ground up for multitrack recording and mixing. (Virtually all DAWs support ASIO.) I don’t want to try compiling Audacity with ASIO. It would probably take me a long time to get everything configured…
But as long as you have Audacity with ASIO and hardware with ASIO drivers multitracking should work.
ok, i think i finally figured it out. mme records just fine. asio, records w/ fuzzy raspi sound. i tried the usb u46dj w/ the native drivers and gave me grief. so i installed an esi maya 44 w/ native drivers and tested both asio and mme and the mme was spot on - but asio, was raspi and fuzzy sounding. so the only common theme here is esi asio is buggy and not up to par, or there was an error or so during the compile of audacity for asio.
