I’m trying to connect my Mackie DL16S to my Windows laptop running Audacity and record all channels
If I choose MME or Windows DirectSound I can record and playback, but only get the choice of mono or stereo. If I choose Windows WASAPI I get 16 channels which is what I want. However, if I click record I get the error message:
I set the project rate to 48KHz as per the Mackie FAQ (though I get the same error at the default 44.1KHz). Selecting Audacity’s diagnostics I get the details below. It looks like there are no supported rates for WSAPI. Do you have advice on how to set this up?
Windows 10 pro 18363.815
USB Driver 4.67.0
Audacity 2.3.3 deviceinfo.txt (6.33 KB)
I can record successfully if I select MME or Windows DirectSound then either mono or stereo. If I select WASAPI then I get the sample rate error regardless of whether I select mono, stereo or any of the numbered channels 3-16.
It’s sounding to me like a driver issue. I’ve not spotted anything “wrong” about your setup, so I don’t know why it doesn’t work.
Is there a support forum for Mackie users? If there is, then you could try asking there if anyone has successfully recorded more than 2 channels from a DL16S with Audacity.
Mackie’s response was “Select DirectSound, not WASAPI. From here, you’ll manually add the other inputs in the I/O section of your DAW.”
My understanding is that Audacity with DirectSound supports only a mono or stereo input not multiple channels. Correct? Is there any interpretation of their response that will work with Audacity?
Is this an Audacity limitation or Mackie? Has anyone got multi-track recording from a Mackie DL16S on Windows using any DAW?
I tried it, but as I stated in my original post I could get only mono or stereo. But I’m not an advanced Audacity user and might have missed something.
You’ve not missed anything. I missed that you have already posted your deviceinfo.txt file.
If you look in the deviceinfo.txt file from your first post, you will see that each of the DirectSound devices have either 2 input channels or 2 output channels. Audacity can’t change that. If the DirectSound device only has 2 inputs and 2 outputs (which it does), then that’s all that is available to Audacity via DirectSound.
Looking again at the DL16S. Is the device physically connected via USB to your computer, or just connected by wifi?
Another data point.
I installed Pro Tools First. I was successful in recording multiple channels. PTF has a limit of 4 inputs which is not enough for my needs, but it does show that the Mackie driver can supply separate channels. PTF automatically configures the I/O so I couldn’t see exactly what it was doing, but when selecting the playback engine I noticed it refers to the Mackie ASIO driver.
I guess I could try to build Audacity with ASIO. I did build Audacity many years ago. I remember it was a lot of effort to get the build environment set up though it could be easier now. So I would love it if anyone shares a bright idea before I go down that path.
You could try https://www.wavosaur.com
It’s not open source, but it is free and it supports ASIO. They claim that it can record multi-channel audio. It may not be suitable for editing multi-channel, but if you can record and export a multi-channel WAV, then you can do your editing in Audacity.
I bit the bullet and built Audacity with ASIO. I can now successfully record multiple channels
Steve, I have some feedback on the Windows build documentation if you are interested.
For future reference, I don’t think Mackie’s USB driver for the DL16S supports multi-channel recording on MME, DirectSound or WASAPI. The only option is to make your own ASIO build.
Audacity 2.4.0 is due to be released very soon. Feedback on that version would be useful, or alternatively, if you have time, you could post detailed steps in this forum board: Compiling Audacity - Audacity Forum
If you choose the latter then I can lock the post and pin it to the top as I have for the Linux instructions (The Linux instructions will be replaced once 2.4.0 has been released).
