I recorded a lecture. I normally can hear something, but I see no wave form and I can’t hear anything. So, as usual, I went to amplify. After looking at online help, I’m uncertain what settings to use. Amplify 0.0 gives me nothing. When I return to amplify, it shows amplify 50.0. That gives me nothing but static. This wasn’t this hard before. Using Audacity 3, what are good setting to amplify speaking. I don’t want to have to record the whole thing over again. Thanks.
Ken
If all I can get at 50 is loud static, have I recorded anything? I tried amplify 20.0. That made no sound either. I’d doing something wrong.
You recorded nothing but noise. 
I can’t guess what went wrong but you probably would have noticed low recording levels if you had been watching the meters.
In the future, you might want to consider a solid-state recorder if it’s important. And if it’s super-important, record with your computer (or something else) too as a back-up.
Computers are the least reliable things we own and there are lots of settings to mess-up. And, often we don’t know there was a problem until the next day.
The maximum Amplify goes to in one-shot is 50dB. You can run it again but most-likely you’ll just amplify the noise.
Thanks. I figured out what I did wrong. So, the default for amplify seems to be 50. Is that what I want? I thought something close to 0.0 was best, but clearly not. However, my problem today was pushing the mute button on my mic and not releasing it.
That was one problem. The others were not watching the bouncing time line waveform or live listening to the performance on headphones.
Koz
Thanks. I don’t normally wear headphones when I record. I guess I will start doing that. It would have saved me a lot of time. I never see a sound wave until I have amplified afterwards. Is there some trick to be able to see a sound wave as I record? I realize this may sound very novice, and it probably is, but this is far from my specialty. I don’t do this enough to have learned all there is to know about making an audio recording. If I could program the system to do what I want in Java, I’d be fine, but that’s well past what I know to do.
What’s the microphone?
The difference between real world sound volume variations and the volume allowed in electronic recording is massive. You are a poster child for this because many times you can’t see anything on the timeline and yet you can run software to bring up your performance. Except in this case where there was no performance.
Fuzzy rule: The wiggly lines on the time line should peak at about half-way up during the performance.
While you have the system recording, lean forward and slowly talk louder and louder. Watch Audacity. You should hit a volume where the timeline starts to wiggle up and down. Do Not Blow into a microphone, but you can talk as loud as you want. That point may be “normal” volume. Adjust the microphone volume controls so the timeline wiggles like that at your normal speaking volume.
That should greatly increase your performance quality.
Koz
