Can't hear other track while recording. Overdub is turned on.

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

In Windows 10, Audacity 2.4.2 I can no longer hear the first track when recording a second track. Overdub is checked. I can hear the first track OK when I just play it. Any advice I have found for this problem has been for a Mac. I’ve been using Audacity for just a few days and it worked as advertized up until today.

I’m also getting the “Recorded audio was lost at labeled locations…” everytime I click the STOP icon. Re the advice on that message, I have quite a powerful PC and no other apps are running at all and I’m saving to a new solid state disk (not external).

HELP!!

tia
las

2

I figured out why the first track couldn’t be heard. I had the mic set to headphones, instead of to the computer mic. I don’t know how that got changed between yesterday and today, but there you go.

I’m still getting the annoying “recorded audio was lost” message and the accumulation of “tracks” associated with it. But nothing is really lost so it’s just an annoyance. I’d be happy to hear how to get rid of it, though.

3

Is it producing any labels when it does that?

4

Yes, with a new track for each which is a pain to have to keep deleting. But I’m pretty sure the label is at the point where I click the STOP icon. BUT WAIT! I went to double check about the placement of the label, and now I’m not getting any. I just get new tracks with a 1 in a box at the point where the recording starts. None of the track is actually lost. I can’t remember for sure what the “label” looked like, I just know I saw something in addition to what I’m seeing now. I don’t get the message when I click the Pause icon, and I don’t get it when I click STOP when I’m just playing, not recording.

5

If you only get a label at the start or end of the recording, then you will be fairly safe to turn off “drop-out detection”.

If you get labels between the start and the end, then they indicate that some audio has been lost close to the position of the label.

6

Thanks very much. That worked fine. Do you know what might cause it to display that message whenever I click the STOP icon? Just out of curiosity?

tia
las

7

My “guess” is that it’s a minor bug in the sound card driver where it stops delivering samples before it closes the stream rather than stopping the samples “when” it closes the stream. The dropout detection is very sensitive (it needs to be to work at all), so if even just one sample is missing when the stream stop, it will be detected as a “drop-out”.

8

Thanks!