Multiple recordings

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hello all,

Forgive me if this has been asked before, but I had no idea what search terms to look for.

I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible to have two different sessions of Audacity recording different sources at the same time on the same machine. I’ve purchased Virtual Audio Cable, as between it and VLC I can channel audio out to separate channels.

However, once I have opened one Audacity session and set it recording, any further sessions I open has it’s recording options locked. Is there any way to stop this?

Hope this makes sense,

Lee W

2

No, unless you run the other Audacity on another user account, in a Virtual Machine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine ) or use Audacity 1.0.0 as the other version of Audacity. Recording dropouts are possible, especially with the Virtual Machine solution.

The idea of using VAC or similar is to aggregate two streams into one stream and so you only then need one instance of Audacity. See Can I record from two microphones (or even two sound cards) at the same time?.


Gale

3

Basically, no, but…

What are you actually trying to do? You may not need to run two instances of Audacity.

4

I work for a couple of online radio stations that cover local football matches, and I just wanted to be able to record to separate matches at the same time.

VAC1 to a Audacity session recording that and VAC2 to a separate one recording that one.

5

VAC is not our product, so we are not able to offer technical support for it, but if you can configure VAC to create one stereo stream with one game in one channel and another game in another, then Audacity should be able to record that as a 2 channel stereo track, and the two channels can then be split into 2 mono tracks when the recording is finished (see: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/splitting_and_joining_stereo_tracks.html)

if you require the matches to be recorded in stereo, then you will need to configure VAC to produce one 4 channel audio stream, and set Audacity to record 4 channels. The left and right channels of each game can then be joined into stereo tracks after the recording is finished.

To export each game separately, use “File > Export Selected Audio…” (http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/file_menu.html#export_selection)

The important thing regarding setting up Audacity, is that you need to configure VAC so that it presents one virtual audio device for Audacity to record from, then, using the device toolbar, set Audacity to record from that device and ensure that the number of channels match.

Note that doing this is quite demanding on computer resources, so there are no guarantees how well it will work. A better approach would be to use two computers.

6

That is brilliant, sir. I’ll give that a go.

I’ve got a steamingly powerful PC, so hopefully it should be okay with it.

Thanks very much.