Nothing Happens when I press record ?

Hi There

I have used Audacity in the past however over the last week, now that I am using an external microphone, I often have a “nothing happens” situation.

I can choose my microphone - and it will record a few times then all of a sudden, I press record and I just get two red lines that just freeze.
I stop start stop start stop start and then it will work again once or twice.

Any assistance fixing this would be so welcome!

I am using a brand new laptop, windows 10, rode NT1 and the rode AI-1 interface.


Thanks a bunch
Buckers

I am using a brand new laptop

Next time it does that, change the Audacity recording microphone to the laptop internal microphone (next to the microphone symbol). Make sure you’re recording from it with the scratch test.

Consult your instructions where the laptop microphone is. Mine is just left of the left-hand shift key.

It may be an external microphone sound problem. Probably not a USB connection problem. USB problems cause Audacity to forget about the microphone forever and you have to intentionally reconnect and reestablish it. If it comes back by itself, then that’s not it.

The rode AI-1 has a headphone connection on the front. Does the sound keep going there when the Audacity recording stops?

Do you use cloud storage? That can cause problems. Audacity doesn’t like that very much and may fail if it can’t establish a perfect, non-network connection to it’s drives.

Do you use Skype/Zoom/Chat? Are any of those still running when you’re trying to record—even in the background? That can cause problems. Those services insist on a unique connection and don’t like to share the microphone.

Koz

Why are we doing this? What’s the show?

If you go much over about two weeks struggling with this, the solution might be stop recording directly onto the computer.

Koz

Thank you!
I will have a look into these suggestions.

Most appreciated.