Hi. I have really enjoyed using Audacity as a home studio recorder. I wish there would be a way in this program to record more than one track at a time. I would be interested in having an update that would allow multiple tracks to be assigned to different inputs and then recording on each of those individual tracks at the same time. Otherwise, it takes a while to overdub everything which is how I have had to do it so far. I understand that doing a change like this could have the potential to be extensively complicated. But maybe I am missing something that is right there?? Otherwise tho, I Love the program.
I’m actually investigating this right now.
The industry standard and currently supported method is requiring an audio interface which does many inputs. While you can’t assign channels to tracks in Audacity, you can record all channels of a, say, 18 input interface and once you’re done recording delete all the empty tracks. More professional DAWs let you do the assignment so you don’t have to fight empty tracks, but they won’t let you record from different devices.
Recording stuff from different interfaces is not something I’ve seen supported in audio software, but I have seen it done in OBS so it’s technically possible. How feasible it is in Audacity’s tech stack is not yet known though.
As far as interaction goes, I’m currently exploring many different options. One method would be to have an option in the tracks menu saying “enable multi-track recording” which then spawns per-track device and channel dropdowns in the track control panel.
Yeah. I havn’t tried connecting multiple interfaces, but as far as recording several tracks from one interface, and keeping them seperate on the software, audacity combines all the tracks of the input and makes it one master buss.
Audio Setup → Recording Channels lets you specify how many channels you want to record in
ok. I must’ve not noticed that option before. Thanks I’ll have to check it out.
Hi Jayln
Are you trying to record directly to your computer, or going thru a mixing board ?
I work with a local theater group. We record “Old Time Radio” shows that are replayed on our local radio station . I regularly record five to twenty channels at once using Audacity on Ubuntu Studio. We use lavalier mics to an Allen and Heath 32 channel mixer. I pickup a feed off the mixer into my laptop.
What setup are you using?
Bob