Why will audacity not work at all? I have used audacity in the past but it no long works at all. I downloaded the new version and I have windows 10 but there is nothing I can do to make a recording. I want to record from my computer not microphone. Why won’t audacity record? Your help manual doesn’t solve my issue. At the base when trying to record there is a statement that the recording is paused when it is supposed to be playing. There is nothing I can do to make it play no matter how many times I hit start or pause. And the other functions don’t seem to work. It is frozen and does not work at all.
You didn’t give us any details… Are you using WASAPI loopback?
You need to select loopback and the device that’s playing the sound (usually your regular soundcard).
And you need to start playback (usually from your Internet browser) FIRST, before recording. If there is no “audio stream” WASAPI won’t start recording. It can record a silent stream but it can’t record “nothing”.
There is no way to select loopback that I can find. I can select enable looping but there is no loopback option. I don’t know how to select playback which is always playing. Whenever I play my recorded music, watch you tubes, engage in webinars, and everything else always plays without any input from me other than clicking on the recording or video. Past recordings play through my media player. In the past Audacity was simple and user friendly. Now it is frozen and won’t work at all.
In a nutshell, Audacity does not work at all, it is frozen and doesn’t respond to anything I do. I have windows 10 with my PC. In the past audacity worked and the program has been in my computer since 2016 with a shortcut on my desktop. In 2016 I recorded about 6,000 songs which are now stored as WAV files on my desktop and in my cell phone so I can play them on remote speakers through Bluetooth. I play these songs almost daily.
On October 24, 2020 I recorded another 4 hours of music including many artists with my computer and the same Audacity that I have always used in the past. Everything worked fine.
In recent times there has been funny stuff going on when I open my recorded songs through my media player on my desktop. A window always opens similar with the normal appearance and ability to start, stop, and pause the sound and select anywhere on the time line to start. The window has always had a look to it. It used to have a symbol similar to what the icon on my desktop looks like. Then recently the look (appearance) changed without me doing anything other than open the file like always. Then it would change back to normal. And now it displays a symbol of a note when reading music. This has now continued such that there is an indication that Audacity is taking control of my desktop and making changes similar to what Microsoft does with updates. I turn off my computer every night and restart it in the morning and always install updates.
On December 7 2024 I attempted to make some recordings of music playing through my computer but it would only record “what is in the air” so to speak. Rather than record what the output from the computer to Audacity it recorded the sounds of my speakers playing and any noise that I made, or noise from outdoors. I could not make it record only from my computer no matter what I did. From the back of my computer I unplugged one of the connections to a set of remote speakers and plugged that output into the microphone input on my computer with an extension, but that didn’t work and the only thing I could record was what was in the air including noise associated with air.
So I decided to remove the software from my computer and install the latest version which is frozen and I can’t figure out how to make it work.
Loopback is a Windows feature and it should show-up for your regular soundcard or anything with “regular” WASAPI drivers. It might show-up under “speakers”.
It’s becoming more rare, but some computers also come with "Stereo Mix" or “What-U-Hear”, which also record the output from your soundcard. I believe those functions are provided with the driver from certain soundcard manufacturers.
Or there are a few possible software solutions at the bottom of this page. TotalRecorder had a reputation of being “foolproof” but I haven’t read much about it lately, and it’s not free.
Or as explained on that same page, if you have a desktop/tower computer and a regular soundcard with line-in (usually blue) you can use a loopback cable between the speaker output and the line input. (You’ll need a Y-splitter in order to connect external speakers or headphones at the same time.)