Ok. So I have not yet used 4.0.1. So I don’t know if this problem is fixed or not.
I am currently using 4.0.0.262451524
A few days ago I setup Audacity 4.0 to record on a single stereo track from my device, where my friend was on Mic 1 and I was on Mic 2, he was left and I was right.
Here is the exact hardware I was using:
Laptop - HP pavilion with a powered USB C port. The pc OS is Microsoft windows 11
The laptop is using a nvme drive as its main storage and I directed Audacity 4 to save our file on that same drive. The alternate drive is an SSD drive internal the computer and was not used in this recording.
Audio device - Zoom H6 Essential powered by the USB C port on the laptop via a USB 4 cable. The cable can give well enough power and sends data quite well, I’ve used to power and send signal to an external JSAUX FlipGo dual display.
The audio device is set in the USB menu as Audio Interface only and sending only a stereo mix. Channel one and two are “linked” so channel 1 mic is extreme left channel and channel 2 is extreme right channel. The sampling rate is set at 48 kHz. The zoom ASIO driver is also set at 48 kHz and the buffer size is set at 128 samples. The interface records in 32-bit.
the two microphones were condenser microphones made by Shure. They were KSM32. Phantom power was given to the microphones and we could hear ourselves no problem.
I used a headphone splitter off of the device, so the both of us could hear ourselves. I had the “loop Back” feature turned on so that anything we saw on youtube could at least be heard in the recording.
I could not find a feature that allowed me to record to separate tracks for my friend and I at the same time. After a little research, I found out that the “loop back” feature is only allowed when the device is set on Audio Interface Mode only with only the stereo mode output.
So my grandmaster plan was this. The two channels we used were “linked” and his voice would be on one side of the stereo stream and mine would be on the other side. After were finished, I wanted to separate the stereo track into 2 mono tracks, then I could edit them separately, the bring them back together into a single stereo track and convert the finished Wav file to an mp3.
After some testing and making sure connections were correct, I would hit record on the Audacity 4.0 app and we would start talking. I saw that the ASIO drivers were correctly identified in the Audacity app. In the Audio Setup, it correctly identified the Zoom H6 Essential ASIO driver. Under recording channels in the menu, it saw that the Zoom device was sending two signals in stereo. Sampling format was in 32 bit and sampling rate was at 48,000 Hz.
I would see the soundwaves on the single stereo track, then after about 4 minutes of talking, I would check back to the app, I would see it was frozen at around the 2 minute mark.
There were no error codes. Windows 11 correctly was working outside of the App. I would attempt to hit the stop button and nothing would happen. Then I tried clicking on the stop button or any other button, and nothing would happen. None of the menus worked too.
I restarted the app…same thing. I restarted windows and got the same thing.
The funny thing…
This same exact thing happened to me in Audacity 3.7.5…Why 3.7.5, because this was the only version that had a special thing that allowed me to see the ASIO Driver for my Zoom device. While using 3.7.5, I would start recording and 2 minutes later it would stop recording to the hard disk. I wrote a post on this and someone responded that this issue would be fixed in 4.0.
What can I do to fix this?
Is this a problem where I have to use specific setting on my driver or device? I love audacity. I have a tendency not to drift towards other apps, because I feel like what I am doing is simple enough where I don’t need a massive DAW to record just my friend and I talking for a possible podcast.
Thank you for your help. I know this software is free and you guys try your best at making this a really good software.
We ended up just recording straight to the device without using anything on the computer. Then we just stated that what we heard on youtube will be added later.