Audacity stops recording during silence

I have the same problem as the user on this thread from 5 years ago:
Audacity stops recording during silence [SOLVED] (None of the solutions offered to him work for me.)

This never used to be a problem prior to around 2018, but has started happening since around then.

It occurs randomly. Most of the time, it doesn’t happen, other times it does. For example, just now I recorded a bit of audio normally, with lots of silence either side of it. A few minutes later, I came back to Audacity, hit record, and this time the problem occurred, where it doesn’t start recording until it hears something.

I hit “record” and instead of recording silence (as desired), nothing is recorded until the first sound plays, which is always truncated because it didn’t start recording in time.

Another detail is that when sound has been playing and it goes back to silence, I will sometimes hear a continuous rapid stuttering sound, like the last portion of sound is playing in a loop.

My specs and settings:

Audacity version: 3.6.1 (but this has been happening since at least 2018)
Device: Desktop PC, Windows 7 x64
No sound card

Transport options > Enable sound activated recording = OFF
Preferences > Recording > Sound Activated Recording = OFF

Host: Windows WASAPI
Playback Device: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Recording Device: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device) (loopback)

(The above settings, such as using WASAPI, are the only ones I’ve been able to randomly find that allow me to record the computer’s audio, if there are better settings then I’ll be happy to use them.)

WASAPI stops recording when there is no sound
windows wasapi stops record when silenced. - #2 by steve

But most of the time I CAN record silence.

This would mean there’s an imperceptibly quiet sound playing on my computer most of the time?

Do you know any way to record the computer’s audio other than using WASAPI?

I’ve just checked. I have made many recordings (WASAPI) with silence either side. The silence is true silence. It cannot be amplified or compressed.

There is a difference between a silent stream which is a series of audio samples with a numerical value of zero, and no stream.

WASAPI can record a silent stream but it can’t record no stream.

A work-around MIGHT be to play a silent file in Windows Media Player.

There are some alternatives at the bottom of this page.

If you have a desktop/tower with a regular soundcard, WASAPI (or the other hosts) WILL work with a loopback cable. (It’s “loopback” that can end-up with no stream.) You’ll need a Y-splitter to connect headphones or speakers at the same time.

Thanks for the excellent solution. The ‘loopback cable’ idea is too much work but I might consider having a silent audio file I can play when it happens. Doesn’t happen all the time.

The main reason I made this thread was I wanted this bug to be known about. (And the fact that it happens sometimes and not all the time suggests it’s a bug.)

It’s a characteristic of WASAPI which is Microsoft, not Audacity.

…I ASSUME the Audacity developers could add a feature to play a silent stream while recording if they wanted to.

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