I don’t know what happened or changed in my setup, maybe I clicked on something by accident. It used to be that I could open a WAV file in Audacity and also play my guitar and hear it through my speakers at the same time. I could figure out what I wanted to overdub but also I could listen to how my guitar set up (effects, etc) sounded against what was already recorded. This would allow me to tweak guitar settings to get the sound I wanted before recording.
Then today something changed. As soon as I hit Play on an audio track Monitoring stops. If I stop the track I have to re-enable Monitoring in order to hear myself through the speakers again … I can either listen to audio playback or monitor myself playing, but cannot do both at the same time. Oddly, if I press record I CAN hear both the audio playback as well as monitor myself, but why should I have to go into Record to do this?
Any idea how to get my system back to allowing me to turn on Monitor and not have it keep turning itself off on me?
It sounds like you were listening to Stereo Mix instead of Audacity Playback. Stereo Mix is selected in Windows control panels and is a feed of Everything Playing on the Computer.
If you like to record YouTube sound or other internet services, Stereo Mix is the service you mess with to get that.
Thanks for the response. Stereo Mix is disabled. I assume that’s how it’s supposed to be, as IIRC my USB recording device had to be enabled for it to work at all. Though I just checked and I am able to enable both at the same time. I then tested in Audacity and I still have the same situation as I described below.
You’ve not given enough information for us to work with.
Which version of Windows?
Which version of Audacity?
What sort of “effects”? Hardware stomp pedals?
How is your guitar connected to the computer? Have you mic’d up your guitar amp?
What sort of sound card?
How / where are your speakers connected to the computer?
Is it a laptop computer?
Any other information that may be relevant?
What sort of “effects”? Hardware stomp pedals?
Digitech RP200
How is your guitar connected to the computer? Have you mic’d up your guitar amp?
Guitar to Digitech RP200, Digitech RP200 to Behringer UCG102, Behringer UCG102 into USB
What sort of sound card?
B75MA-E33 onboard RealTek ALC887
How / where are your speakers connected to the computer?
3.5mm jack of the onboard sound card
Is it a laptop computer?
No
Any other information that may be relevant?
None that I can think of
I don’t see how that would ever have worked without a very noticeable delay on the guitar sound. The problem being that there is no hardware route from the guitar input to the speaker output. You may have been able to minimise the delay if you were using other software (not Audacity) with ASIO drivers, but routing the input from one audio device (the UCG 102) to the output of another audio device (the RealTek ALC887) through software using standard Windows drivers will almost certain cause a very noticeable delay between what you play and what you hear.
Unfortunately the Behringer documentation is a bit vague on this point. It says (page 5, GUITAR LINK UCG102 Software Installation Guide)
1.3 Device drivers and latency
A device driver is an interface that ensures communication between
the software (audio application) and the hardware. In recent years,
the PC platform has witnessed the establishment of several different
driver models for sound cards. Some of these drivers cannot be
used for simultaneous recording and playback or for working with
software plug-ins, since they do not support the full performance
provided by professional sound cards and cause a long time delay
(this is called “latency”).
You will normally find the selection of a driver model for computer
hardware in the standard default settings of the software you are
using. If necessary, check the documentation for your software.
Use the Control Panel to set up a lower latency. The smaller the value,
the better. If audio dropouts occur, try increasing the latency in stages.
Audacity does not ship with ASIO support due to a conflict in the licensing terms (ASIO is not open source).
I don’t know how much the lack of ASIO will affect monitoring if you monitor via the UCG 202, but monitoring via the UCG 202 headphone socket should give you the lowest latency achievable with your hardware.
You are correct, there is a pretty noticeable delay. I’ve used the latency correction trick (Preferences → Recording → Latency Correction) to get it pretty close. From there typically what I do is turn on monitoring and play what I already have laid down, and jam with it not worrying about the delay. I check how my effects sound against what I already have, and once I’m happy with that I turn up the volume on my click track and turn down my speakers so I can focus on my click track. I’m usually off by no more than .01 of a second at most, very often I’m dead on. In any case, this has nothing to do with the problem I’ve posted about, but thank you for asking.
How was Windows monitoring turned on before, when pressing Play did not turn the monitoring off? Are you using “Listen to this device” in Windows Sound?
Do you need to use the onboard sound card for monitoring? Can you set the Audacity playback device in Device Toolbar to the UCG and does that give you the Audacity track mixed with your guitar in the UCG headphones output? The UCG manual is vague but claims you can play along to a song playing on the computer.
How was Windows monitoring turned on before, when pressing Play did not turn the monitoring off?
I’m not sure what you mean by “Windows monitoring”. I’m not familiar with that being a service or feature of either Windows or Audacity. If you’re asking what my playback settings were, they were set to the onboard “Realtek High Definition Audio” which is still set as my default playback device.
Are you using “Listen to this device” in Windows Sound?
Yes, the checkbox for Listen to this device is checked, and Playback through this device: is listed as Default Playback Device.
Do you need to use the onboard sound card for monitoring?
I really would prefer this, as wearing headphones for even as little as 30 minutes can start to give me headaches. (I have a slight to moderate case of an overprotective immune system that reacts to pressure. In a light case I get tension headaches and what seem to be allergies, in a bad case I break out in hives.)
Can you set the Audacity playback device in Device Toolbar to the UCG and does that give you the Audacity track mixed with your guitar in the UCG headphones output? The UCG manual is vague but claims you can play along to a song playing on the computer.
Yes, I can do this, but it’s no different than playing it to my speakers. I have to tell it to Start Monitoring after every time I hit play.
By “Windows monitoring” I meant “Listen to this device”, or unmuting the input on the Playback side of Windows Sound. However most built-in sound devices do not let you do that these days, and USB sound devices almost never do.
Audacity can also monitor audibly without recording if Monitoring is on and Transport > Software Playthrough is enabled. Like “Listen to this device”, Software Playthrough has latency. However Audacity monitoring is not persistent, so if you press Play in Audacity, monitoring will stop. It has been like that for years.
I can monitor audibly using “Listen to this device” while playing a track in Audacity and recording from an external mic.
What do you tell to Start Monitoring? Audacity cannot enable monitoring while playing.
Have you tried setting Audacity playback to the UCG but setting “Listen to this device” for the UCG to UCG? I don’t know why that would be necessary. I would have though UCG would automatically monitor the guitar input.
You should be able to connect active or powered speakers to the headphones port of UCG.
A bit more information. You should be able to hear the guitar input with the music track in Audacity (though this may not be true for some of the cheap (not Behringer) Chinese copies of the UCG 102).
This will add significant latency to the guitar unless you use an audio application that can use the UCG’s ASIO drivers (unfortunately Audacity as shipped cannot use ASIO drivers due to licensing issues).
Strange, I could swear I replied to this post but I don’t see my responses here. Oh well, take two.
> How was Windows monitoring turned on before, when pressing Play did not turn the monitoring off?
I’m sorry but “windows Monitoring” is a bit of a vague phrase. Please clarify. Are you asking whether the “Monitoring” feature in Audacity was turned on before I noticed a problem? If that’s what you’re asking then I can’t answer that. When I installed the program initially I didn’t have to turn on Monitoring to hear myself playing while listening to playback, and since I didn’t have to do anything extra I didn’t take note of how that item was configured.
> Are you using “Listen to this device” in Windows Sound?
Yes.
> Do you need to use the onboard sound card for monitoring?
Yes. I have a strange allergy-like reaction to heat and/or pressure, wearing headphones for more than an hour or two will give me a headache and if I ignore that I end up with a migrane and start breaking out in hives. It’s not life-threatening but it’s annoying.
> Can you set the Audacity playback device in Device Toolbar to the UCG and does that give you the Audacity track mixed with your guitar in the UCG headphones output?
I did this and I can hear myself playing with the track when Monitoring is turned on. But I still wind up with the same problem. Monitoring is turned off when I play a track.