Audacity won't play or record

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

I am learning to do voiceovers and also learning new gear.

I have an Onyx Blackjack audio interface, and when i change mics or cables, I usually just unplug the audio interface since it doesn’t have an on/off switch, and I don’t want to damage my mic with a sudden power surge.

Just now I recorded on track in Audacity, but haven’t saved it yet. I unplugged my Onyx, changed mic cables, plugged back in the Onyx, and when I hit Record I get an error pop-up:

Error opening sound device.
Try changing the audio host, recording device and the project sample rate.

Why am I getting this error?

I have macOS Sierra and Audacity v2.2.2

Never had this issue on my old Mac and with older version of Audacity.

If I quit out of Auacity and come back in, the problem disappears, but what is annoying is that often I have unsaved work that I do NOT want to save while I am swapping out mics and cables, and so to resolve this it forces me to save any scratch work which is a pain!

2

Changing cables in the middle of a production or recording is insanely dangerous. You should only hot-swap cables when the production isn’t that important.

If Audacity does survive the changeover, Transport > Rescan…

Koz

3

Why is it “insanely dangerous”?

And what do you mean by “hot-swap”? (I had “Take 1” recorded, but not saved, unplugged my audio interface, plugged in a new cable/mic, plugged back in my audio interface, and went to Audacity > File > New to do “Take 2” when I get the error mentioend above.)

I didn’t save “Take 1” - and would prefer not to - because maybe “Take 2” is superior and I will save “Take 2” really as filename "“Take 1”. (I’m just experimenting and getting comfortable with Audacity and my gear…)


What does that do?

And why is this error appearing in the first place?

4

See this page in the Audacity Manual: Error opening sound device - Audacity Manual

WC