Help with USB mic issues

Hey guys!

Bit of a newb here, trying to get things working with my USB mic on Audacity…

U have come to grips with the fact that my mic is going to have 1 second latency no matter what I do, but I want to know how to record without my mic coming through the headphones and just the beat(so the latency doesn’t throw me off, I can adjust the timing after recording) , the USB mic level seams to be there even with no programs open so am finding this a bit of a challenge…

My friend suggested switching off “software playthrough” in "Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O BUT there is no “Audio” section under my preferences???

HELP!!! This problem is driving me crazy!!!

Audacity Preferences.

Edit > Preferences > Recording > [ ] Playthrough (de-select).

You can do overdubbing and sound-on-sound just fine with almost any computer, but you can’t listen to the computer. You have to listen to the sound device or microphone.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/samsonGTrackConnections.jpg

The three hardware devices we reviewed all provide headphone services for mixed monitoring – theatrically perfect overdubbing.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_recording_multi_track_overdubs.html

Koz