I love Audacity but have a problem that I solved in the past (1 year ago) but can’t fix now. What’s happening is that I have a PC and a laptop, both Dells running Win7. On the PC, when I run Audacity, I get no audio output unless I am recording or playing back a selection or file that has been previously recorded. (what I want)
On the Dell laptop, I get audio throughput with or without Audacity in recording or playback mode. Audacity will still record my material, but I want the audio output dependent on whether I have playback or recording modes active in Audacity, like the PC. I have been through the Audacity and Windows sound settings (devices, transport, etc.) several times and they appear to be identical between the two computers.
I am guessing that there is a setting that I am missing as this did work properly before. Does anyone in the Forum have a suggestion as to what setting affects this and what to change it to?
On the Dell laptop, I get audio throughput with or without Audacity in recording or playback mode.
Close Audacity. Do you still get Playthrough? It’s a certain bet that the soundcard is different between the two machines. Control of the soundcard is what gives you tricks like Self-Recording, Recording Everything on the Computer, Recording YouTube, etc. Change the soundcard and Everything Changes.
I believe it’s a Windows setting and this is where you get to talk to the Windows elves. I’m not a Windows elf.
Thanks for your response and comments. I figured this out a while ago but nothing that I tried today worked. Seem to remember that it was a Windows not an Audacity setting but I don’t know what I did before to fix it.
Thought that I might have saved a screen cap with the solution for this, but could not find it if in fact I did that. What I see (actually hear) is playthrough with Audacity opened or not. The good news is that Audacity is engaged and is capturing the audio.
I prefer that the audio be off when Audacity is not playing back or recording but I expect that I can still use it like this if I don’t find my original solution.
In fuzzy general terms, the machine speaker system is getting its signals from “Everywhere” rather than just picking a specific thing like play the sound from FireFox or Play the sound from Audacity. There used to be a specific setting for that called What-U-Hear or Stereo Mix. I think that’s been deprecated, but you can still get that effect on some machines if you know where to go.
People who like to record YouTube or other on-line services usually get killed with this. The folded-over settings and services for YouTube recording are different from recording a simple microphone. And that leads to the instructions to follow the YouTube settings backwards which isn’t particularly helpful.
If you go into the Windows Control Panels, what does it say for recording? Isn’t there a shortcut where you right-click on the desktop speaker icon?
I saw stereo mix as an option on one of the many menus that I looked through today. That doesn’t ring a bell as to what I previously did to correct this issue , I remember it was a one click fix, but worth a try tomorrow. There is an option in Control Panel, in Sound under Advanced Options, to allow the application, in this case Audacity, to have control of the computer’s sound device. On the laptop and the PC this is selected, so this is not the issue. At least I think.
Geez, I should have done a screen cap about what fixed this before.
What is the audio you are hearing that you don’t want to hear? If the audio is input from the device you are recording from, right-click over the speaker icon by the system clock, then choose “Recording Devices”. Right-click over the offending audio device then choose “Properties”. Then click the “Listen”" tab and disable “Listen to this device”.
Hi Gale,
The audio is the line in input connected to a FM receiver. I can record in Audacity in this mode; not a problem. Where it goes south is if I record using this source, then playback through Audacity. I get “live” throughput from the source mixed with playback material at the output to my headphones.
With the other computer, I get line in source material at the headphones if Audacity is not in record or playback mode. If Audacity is in record or playback mode, the source is only from Audacity. The live source is not mixed the Audacity source. Does this make sense?
Do you mean record using this source then play while recording, or play after recording has stopped?
Why would you want “line in source material at the headphones” when Audacity is not recording or playing, but not to hear the line in when playing or recording? You previously appeared to say the opposite - that you wanted “get no audio output unless I am recording or playing back a selection or file that has been previously recorded”.
Perhaps you could explain what the objective is, then we could help.
