I am seeking some help please with Audacity on my Windows 7 laptop.
I used an old version of Audacity to transfer a speech on cassette tape to MP3. While the transfer was successful, parts of the speech (from the speaker furthest away from the microphone I would guess) are inaudible.
In attempting to resolve this, I upgraded to Audacity 2.0.6 (I believe via an exe installer) and started again. However, this time, I couldn’t do the transfer at all as I received the message “Error while opening sound device. Please check the recording device settings and the project sample rate.”.
I followed all the relevant steps set out in http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_errors.html for this error and ensured that the sample rate is set to 44100Hz in Audacity and the microphone and speakers. I’ve also rebooted the machine but I still get the above error.
Do you have any suggestions to help me get it working and also improve the quality of the transfer?
That is likely to be a fault with the recording on the tape. If so, re-recording the tape won’t help, unless the tape was misaligned when you recorded it last time.
If the far away speaker is not buried behind audience noise, you could try Effect > Compressor… to fix it.
What is the make and model number of the tape recorder and how are you connecting it to the computer?
If it is a USB tape recorder, connect it to an empty USB port on the computer, not to a USB hub connected to the computer. Change the USB cable and ensure it is tight both ends. Only launch Audacity after doing all that.
Otherwise, reinstall Audacity 2.0.6 and ensure that “Reset Preferences” halfway through the installer has a tick (checkmark).