Hello, I’m trying to record a podcast with a friend over voice chat. We have it so that we’re both using Audacity on each of our ends, so we can have two audio tracks of each of our voices to make editing easier. On his end, Audacity only picks up his mic, as we want. But on my end, Audacity is recording the sound of both my mic, and the sound that’s coming from my speakers (in this case, his voice over voice chat). It would also record any other sounds that played (ie music or videos). We also can’t just decide to work with my recording on its own, because my voice is noticeably louder and clearer than his in this recording.
How do I set it up so that Audacity ONLY records my mic, and not my speakers? Funnily enough, all my searching has led to a bunch of people with the opposite problem, but here I am. Is there any solution to this?
You can force some computers to run both speakers and headphones at the same time. Don’t do that.
And there are conditions where you need speakers without headphones. Rock bands for example, but most times you need the headphones.
Local recording is highly recommended for easy editing and good quality voice, but most people try to record their chat. How did you decide to do it the professional way?
Ah, I’m sorry, I made a mistake in my phrasing-- the headphones actually ARE plugged in. By “the sound in my speakers”, I’m referring to the sound that comes out of my computer in general for playback, and in this case plays in my headphones. I only called them speakers because that’s how they’re called in Audacity, but I just realized how that wording may have been midleading. Sorry about that!
But yes, my headphones are plugged in during this. I also tested and confirmed that it’s not my mic picking up the sound from the headphones.
You can configure your machine to record Everything. That can be handy to record internet sound, but as you’re finding, that can really mess up some productions.
How did you discover how to do this? This is not intuitive. I have a favorite musical performer that “looks” like he’s recording multi-city Skype, but if you dig in the comments, he’s doing what you’re doing.
