Overdubbing in Linux plays back silence

Audacity Help Forum GNU/Linux
1

Dear Forum,

Debian Linux: 10.11
Audacity: 3.1.3 Using AppImage
ALSA driver: Using HW access
Audio microphone and playback.

I am attempting to use overdubbing in a Linux environment with two tracks on Debian. When recording the second track, the first track is heard in the headphones. After recording the tracks, the net result is that on the combined playback there is a click, silence until one of the tracks ends, and then the remaining track can be heard. If each of the tracks are played in solo mode they can both be heard individually.

Things that I tried: I installed a windows version of Audacity and was able to get the overdubbing to work as expected. Also the project file from the Linux machine was transferred to the Windows machine and playback exhibited the same results as in Linux (silence is combined playback and normal playback in solo mode). In the reverse, generating a project file in Windows and transferring to Linux I was able to hear both tracks properly in the playback in the Linux machine.
Also installed audacity in the same Debian Linux running under a VM and experienced the same results as the bare metal machine.

(note: Overdubbing is enabled and software playback is disabled).

So can anyone offer a suggestion on how to get overdubbing to work? Please let me know if I can provide further information. Thank you for any assistance.

Best regards,

Bill

2

Does sudo-ing Audacity make it work?

3

Hi, thanks for the reply and Happy New Year!

Using sudo to run audacity with root user privilege did not change the behavior. It behaves as described previously.

Thanks and regards,

Bill

4

Hi,

I went out and got a decent USB microphone and the over dubbing issue is now resolved. It is working as expected and the synchronization is good.

My only inclination as to the resolution is that the old analog microphone had a significant amount of noise, even in quiet mode (~0db). So perhaps when the two noisy tracks were mixed it resulted in an out of bounds result? (Speculation on my part)

Thanks and regards,

Bill