Can Audacity Remember a Microphone?

[ericcartman]

@kozikowski

OK. Not good news.

OS-X 10.11.16. 13" MacBook Air (2015). Apple updates as of 2016-09-22 21:00. Last update was applied to Safari.

Did you know the Air had a fan in it? I always thought it didn’t. Amaze your friends.

The most serious problem: Apparently, Audacity 2.1.2 does not survive a lid close in good order.

Set up Audacity with both built-in microphone and Behringer UM2 with tiny test microphone working in all conditions. The sound meter monitor works and both will make a successful recording.

Close the lid.

After about fifteen seconds of inactivity, the power light on the UM2 goes out. Unplug and replug the USB and it comes back on.

Open the lid and even though Audacity still has USB Audio CODEC in the recording window, the UM2 will not monitor and I get the error message when I try to make a recording.

Apple > System Preferences > Sound has Built-In Microphone selected. So Audacity and the Mac do not match.

Meanwhile, the built-in microphone will not monitor, either, but it will make a recording.

So Audacity has become unstable. As further evidence of that, at one pass of the experiment, I was able to make a UM2 recording after a lid open, but I couldn’t replicate it.

Transport > Rescan… is available but does not help.

Restart Audacity and everything returns to normal.

Koz

this sounds all too familiar, sighhhhhhhhhhhhhh
oh well. Thank you so much for trying though !!!

[cyrano]

@kozikowski

other audio recorder

I’m not sure what you’re asking.

I was asking what you tried already, the Behringer to rule out some oddity with the iMic…

This seems to be a MB Air problem. I’ve had a look at the block schematics for Eric’s MB Air. Seems not too different from other Macbooks. Strange…

[kozikowski]

This seems to be a MB Air problem.

I can try this dance with a full-on MBP-15". I think 2012-ish vintage. That’s how I did the original tests. That’s how I would be recording a show. Not on the MBA.

It has the optical drive and all the ports. You can’t buy those any more…

And just a side note. I did a garden/yard recording and don’t seem to have hits, clicks, pops, ticks or other disturbances…aside from little chirps. No clue where those are coming from or what they are.

Koz

[cyrano]

I don’t have a MB Air around for testing. And I even don’t know anyone doing audio on one.

Could you test with another recording program? Garageband fi?

I close the lid on my MB Pro often. Never a problem with Audacity, but I’m not on EC and my interface is FW connected. But even when I use a USB interface, it’s no problem…

So, is this

• MB Air
• El Capitan
• Audacity

related?

We can rule out the iMic, since the Behringer produces similar results. I would be surprised if this is EC related, because I’ve never heard about the problem. And we know there have been plenty USB-audio problems with EC. Apple has revamped the entire USB stack in Sierra, BTW. According to tests from RME, with good results. Less latency, fi.