I have used Audacity for about a year successfully. Recently, my setting have changed and I don’t know why. I used to be able to find a file on you tube and record it as a sound activated file. Now, if I try to record a file from there I no longer have the luxury of sound activated recording. Also, the recording in very, very substandard. I’m SURE it was one of the settings. I just can’t remember just which one. Please help.
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From your description you may be recording from the internal microphone. Try choosing “stereo mix” or similar in Device Toolbar .
See http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_recording_computer_playback_on_windows.html .
Sound Activated Recording is in the Transport Menu.
Be sure you have copyright holder’s permission before recording from YouTube.
Gale
Thank you for your suggestion. The program, however, does not allow me the option of stereo mix any longer. It used to, not now. Any suggestions?
Stereo Mix is increasingly not supported on Windows - this is not an Audacity issue, it’s entirely to do with Windows and the sound card drivers, so there is not much that we can do about it.
There is some experimental work going on to improve Audacity’s ability to record what is playing on the computer, but I’m not a Windows guy and I don’t know if this will be working properly in time for Audacity 2.0.4 (due for imminent release). In the mean time, see this article http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Mixer_Toolbar_Issues#cp
If you are on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8, the new 2.0.4 release should be able to record computer playback even if your sound card does not support it.
To enable recording of computer playback, choose “Windows WASAPI” host in the first box of Device Toolbar then in the third box, choose the “loopback” input for the device that is playing the sound.
Gale