Recording a track does nothing, as nothing gets recorded?!

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

Hi again,

I’m not sure what’s going on. Yesterday, I connected my microphone to my computer and tried recording a track; unfortunately, nothing seems to get recorded! I tried singing, I tried speaking - nada. shrug This is very weird, especially as I’ve recorded with Audacity before with no trouble.

At first, I thought there was something wrong with my microphone (a Rode NT-USB), because although I tried connecting it to several USB ports, nothing was being recorded and I couldn’t see any power going to the microphone. However, tonight I tried connecting it and I saw it powering on - but, again, nothing gets recorded, not even the background noises (cars outside, etc.) that I normally have to deal with.

Here are some specs:

  1. My version of Audacity is 2.1.1;
  2. I’m using Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1;
  3. I’m not getting an error message (though it would be a heck of a lot easier if I was).

I’ve also uploaded a screenshot (please find it attached below).
screenshot.png
Does anyone have any ideas? I’ve never experienced anything like this, and it’s driving me crazy. :frowning: Thank you!

2

To record from a microphone, select the microphone as the recording input in the device toolbar.

3

Whoops. blush It’s so obvious… thanks, Steve. Sorry to ask such an silly, elementary question! tries it

Hmm, well, that was strange (and rather embarrassing). I tried plugging the microphone into USB port #2, but it still didn’t show up in the device toolbar (see below):
screenshot2.png
However, when I removed it and plugged it into USB port #1, it worked just fine:
screenshot3.png
Just as a test, I unplugged it again and re-plugged it into USB port #2 - and it worked fine (again). shrug

Any idea why a USB port (which has always worked fine) should stop working, and then - just 30 seconds later - would work fine again? puzzled (I’m sure that if it was a WW2-era airplane, the answer would be “Gremlins did it!”) :slight_smile:

Well, never mind. Thank you for answering my simple question. I guess I last used Audacity so long ago that I forgot about this. blush