help with 2 mics

I have an old laptop that runs windows 10. i have an issue when im trying to use 2 mics. is it possible to use 2 mics at the same time? if there is a forum, i apologize about the repeated question but my actual question is i have a regular aux mic and a usb mic, is there a way to put those to work in audacity together so i can record like a podcast or something?

is there a way to put those to work in audacity together so i can record like a podcast or something?

No. Audacity will only record from one thing at a time. The USB microphone is a thing and the internal soundcard is a thing.

Your thing or device can be a sound mixer and the sound mixer can have more than one microphone. The shift from one microphone to two is the magic place you stop being a convenient home production. There are also ways to record multi-track, but those are serious magic and have a high failure rate.

There are software apps such as Voicemeeter that claim to be able to record more than one device by adding additional channels and redirections inside the machine.

When you do that, it’s possible your machine may stop doing other jobs. It may interfere with Zoom and Skype, or Skype and Zoom may interfere with Voicemeeter. If you try that, post back how it goes.

Koz

There is another way. Have your guest bring their laptop, load Audacity on it, and plug in your USB microphone. Record the analog microphone on your machine. Export the USB show as WAV and post it to your computer for mixing with your show. It probably won’t fit in email, so you may need to post it to cloud storage (DropBox?) and transfer it that way. There’s always thumb drives, too.

You will almost certainly have sync troubles the first show. Do the Slate Trick where you both say “One Two Three” in rhythm and then clap your hands. Use that clap sound to sync the beginning of the show. Lot easier than trying to match up words. On the first show you may want to end clap, too. Figure out the difference between the shows and Effect > Change Speed. You should only need to do the end clap once until somebody changes machines or something breaks. The Change Speed correction will be the same from then on.

Koz

I’m no expert in this, so just an idea: if don’t need to have each mic recorded in a seperate track, you could use 2 external mics plugged into an adapter (see Rode sc6 i.e.) which connects to the laptop mic input.

No syncing, no software fiddling. But both mics mixed into 1 mono track.