A frequent annoyance: Audacity doesn’t recognize audio device changes; specifically, it doesn’t give the option to select a device that’s been recently added, without completely restarting the app, and it’ll try (and fail) to use a device that’s been recently removed, putting up a nasty error message, rather than recovering gracefully. Both are common scenarios when running on a laptop.
Suggestions:
Recognize a device when it’s been added, and add to the list of available devices;
If the selected input or output device has been removed, revert to the default device.
“Rescan” does indeed work as expected. I’d amend my proposed solution to at least provide the option for this to occur automatically when a device is added or removed.
I seem to be having a similar problem! I have an iMac with a macOS Sonoma 14.4.1. The Sound Settings in System Preferences on the iMac for the Output is the Headphone port and for the Input it is the USB and which is for the microphone. I had both the microphone and the headphones plugged into the iMac before installing Audacity. Both are working when I speak into the mic and listen on the headphones. The issue is that the headphones will not display in the dropdown of devices in the Playback Device under Audio Setup in Audacity. I have tried the Rescan Devices in the Audio Setup and I have also tried the Rescan Audio Devices in Transport. I have shutdown the iMac and that doesn’t help and nor has uninstalling Audacity and reinstalling it. I don’t know what else to do and have not been able to get started with Audacity! If anyone can assist I would be most grateful. Thank you
Please describe in more detail, what device is connected how to what other device etc. And please name all devices (not just “external sound card”, but, for example, “Behringer xyz external sound card”.
In general: did you grant access to “Microphone” in the system settings for Audacity?
System Settings → Privacy and Security → Microphone
I only connected two devices to the PC. One is the ATR2100x-USB Microphone (which appears with this same wording in the mac Input settings & in Audacity for the Devices). This is connected to the mac via a USB.
The other device connected to the mac are the headphones and which in the mac Output settings, displays with the name as ‘Headphones’ and type as ‘Headphone port’) and these are connected to the headphone 3.5mm port on the mac. The actual model of the headphones is ATH-M50x which is made by audio-technica. None of this type of information is displayed on the mac settings for the headphones.
In the mac System Settings=>Privacy Settings, Audacity has been allowed to access the microphone.