I have just purchased the GEEKOM A8 AMD mini PC (Windows 11 Pro). I downloaded and installed Audacity (v3.7.3) and also the required FFMPEG (v5). I need to play and record audio from MP3 files (and sometimes Youtube). No sound is recording. Some settings just don’t start to record at all and other settings only record a straight silent line with no wave pattern. I’ve tried all sorts of combinations with no success.
The Playback Device: Realtek HD Audio 2nd output (Realtek(R) Audio) and that works well with my Logitech external speakers plugged into the front microphone front jack.
Available Recording Devices are:
Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio) (loopback)
Realtek HD Audio 2nd output (Realtek(R) Audio) (loopback)
2 - PA-246 (AMD High Defenition Audio Device) (loopback) - Asus Monitor
1 - PA-278CV (AMD High Defenition Audio Device) (loopback) - Asus Monitor
Microphone (Realtek(R) Audio)
I’ve tried all available recording devices with the available hosts: MME, Windows Directsound and Windows WASAPI.
Is there a way to get the settings up and running? Much appreciated.
Check the recording volume slider which is now “hidden” behind the recording level meters. (Sometimes it doesn’t have any effect with loopback but it’s something to try.)
If you want to record streaming audio, select loopback from wherever the sound is coming out. Probably one of the Realtek selections if you are listening through your speakers.
With loopback, the “audio stream” has to be playing before you can start recording. It can be playing silence but it can’t be playing “nothing”.
Any of those should work with the microphone input but loopback only works (and should only show-up) with WASAPI.
FFmpeg is optional and it’s only needed to import/export certain formats. It’s not needed for WAV, MP3, or FLAC.
There’s no need to record MP3 files. 
Just open (or import) them.
That’s probably a mic/headphone combo jack. Sound goes INTO a microphone jack and OUT of a headphone jack. Regular headphones/speakers work with a combo jack but you need a special TRRS plug with an extra contact to use a microphone.
Thanks @DVDdoug much appreciated. I think the issue is, that using the Mic jack for audio out to the speakers is not the ideal system on my new Mini PC. I plugged in the extension speakers to the audio out on my monitor and set Audacity to the monitor for both playback and recording and it all works fine. Thanks for the reply. Cheers.