How to choose input

Audacity Help Forum GNU/Linux
1

I work under Kubuntu 18.04 and Audacity 2.2.1. I have been digitising records, playing them into
a Behring Ucontrol UCA202, and from there into the USB socket in my laptop. This has
worked fine until today, when Audacity seems to take its input from the laptop microphone.
In an older version of Audacity there was a choice of inputs, the correct one being something
like Codec…, but I don’t find that now.

So, how do I tell Audacity to take its input from the USB?

Thank you.
Regards
Gurky

2

Audacity will find anything connected to the computer before it starts. So either restart Audacity with the turntable connected, or Transport > Rescan…

Koz

3

Thanks. But it seems that the PC’s microphone is connected, so it finds
that. Why would it choose that instead of the USB input? If there are
two, how do I tell it which to use? I remember in an older version there
was a menu, and I had to choose CODEC something.

4

With the UCA202 connected, launch Audacity.
Open “Audio device Info” (probably in the Help menu).
When the info appears, use the “Save” button to save the info to a text file.
Attach the saved file to your reply (see: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-attach-files-to-forum-posts/24026/1)

5

I doubt that this will tell you much, but here it is.
deviceinfo.txt (50 Bytes)

6

Stream is active

Which application is using the sound system?

7

I don’t know which application is using the sound system, nor how to
find out. But yesterday I had another go at it, plugging the USB from
the Behringer into the laptop before starting Audacity, and the left-hand
menu button that says “Default” now had the CODEC option. I chose
that and it stopped taking the input from the microphone. So the
problem might be solved.

I think it’s a weakness in the Audacity programming that it is important
what you do before what; in this case plug the USB in before starting
Audacity. The user-friendly way would be that the order is immaterial, e.g.
that Audacity notices that something has been plugged in and adjusts
itself accordingly.

Regards
Gurky

8

That’s on the developer’s “to do” list, but it’s not easy to implement.

If you click on “Transport menu > Rescan audio devices”, then Audacity will refresh it’s list of available audio devices, but note that the scan takes a little while to run. It would be very annoying if Audacity automatically rescanned to check if new devices were available without being asked. The developer’s will need to find a way to detect changes to the available devices without doing a full rescan.