Audacity won't record

Audacity 3 Help Forum macOS
1

I’m trying to use Audacity to digitize a collection of old Vinyl LPs. I’m running Audacity version 3.1.0 on MacOS 10.15.7 on a MacBook Pro.

The line out from my pre-amp is connected to an old Griffin iMic, and the USB from the iMic is connected to the MacBook. I’ve I set up Audacity’s “transport” section to use “Core Audio”, “iMic USB Audio System”, “Stereo Recording” and “Built-in Output” (which is my headphones). Nevertheless, when I press record, nothing happens; I see no waveform, the input level meters show nothing, and there is no sound on the headphones.

In contrast, using Quicktime Player and Garage Band, I can record audio from the iMic USB Audio System without any problem. I can then import this audio into Audacity, and edit it — the editing, including splitting tracks and pop removal, seems to work fine. But recording doesn’t work at all.

As an experiment, I’ve also tried recording form the built-in microphone. This also fails in Audacity (but works in Quicktime Player).

This was a new installation of Audacity. I’ve tried re-booting the MacBook. Soundflower is not installed — should it be? What am I doing wrong?

2

You might need to give Audacity permission to use the “microphone”.

See this forum post: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/no-recording-level/51788/1

– Bill

3

Yeh! That fixed it. Thank you very much.

Is there some reason that Audacity doesn’t tell me that it can’t open the input device? For example, is it a security “feature” of MacOS that MacOS doesn’t tell the app that opening the device failed, but instead pretends that it has succeeded, with zero signal?

4

I’d guess it’s something like that, but I don’t really know :wink: