Hi! I haven’t seen this particular issue answered before, but I like to multitask, so…
I’m in the middle of recording a CD or old cassette with Audacity, with the sound playing through my onboard speakers. I want to watch a video on YouTube while I’m waiting for the recording to finish, without stopping and restarting the Audacity recording in progress. So I’d like to mute the monitored audio from Audacity temporarily so I can watch a video with audio on another app.
You can’t do that as far as I know. Whenever I’ve done that by accident I ended up recording the audio I wanted combined with the unwanted audio from the video.
Audacity isn’t the best way to ‘record’ CDs because they are already digital. You rip them rather than record them. Here’s a list of suitable programs: CD rippers for Mac
Ripping is quicker too. It takes a fraction of the time of recording in real-time.
Every Mac has the program “Music” installed (in earlier OS versions, iTunes). Start Music (or iTunes) and insert the CD, then the titles can be imported. You may wish to adjust the import settings before (Preferences → Files → button “Import settings”).
Unless, that is, you’ve got one (or more) of those CDs that have the wretched copy protection on them. Then your only recourse is to record it in Audacity.
Thank you to all who have responded. I misspoke about CDs. I import them with Apple Music (formerly iMusic).
My question is about muting playback sound in Audacity while recording from a USB audio input (I have an A/D converter), so I can watch and listen to something else on the same computer. I can achieve this if I direct Audacity’s playback to another output destination (e.g., USB output codec) BEFORE I start recording, but NOT once the recording has begun. It seems that it should be easy to mute or adjust the playback volume WHILE RECORDING in the Audacity app (not just muting the computer’s speaker or using headphones). I have used other DAWs that do this, but I like Audacity’s features, like Label Sounds, for recording from analog sources like tape and vinyl.
My recording source is from a USB input, so listening to another app simultaneously while recording does not result in cross-contamination of the Audacity recording.
Still looking for ideas from the community or developers.
(Note: recording with another DAW and importing the track into Audacity afterward is an option, but inconvenient.)
Peter,
I vaguely remember Aerosmith releasing a CD that wouldn’t play on a computer. There was a backlash from fans of course. I have not had any of those other pesky varmints you refer to.
Mark,
mine was a release by Sony of Cerys Matthews called Cockahoop - and yes I remember the backlash against such “pesky varmints”.
Equally annoying is the issue of Region restrictions on DVD - my collection has both UK and US DVDs which means each time I buy a new player I have to dig around on t’interweb to find how to hack the player to make it region-less.