Recording issues with Audacity (Broken, distorted audio, if audio at all)

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

For context, I am recording drums, and my kit is fully mic’d with Darveson and Weymic mics (Two overheads, snare and tom mics, bass drum mic.) As well, Audacity has been updated to the latest, or near latest, version.

Equipment: Depusheng 8 Channel Audio Mixer connected to a 3rd Gen Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface

Computer: HP Victus Laptop, AMD Ryzen 5 7000 series CPU, 16 GB RAM, RTX 2050 GPU

Audacity Settings: Scarlett 2i2 as the recording device, Headphones (Realtek(R) Audio), MME as the audio host, Sample Rate 44100 Hz, 32 Bit Float, Buffer length 100 milliseconds

Windows Settings: 2 Channel, 24 Bit, 44100 Hz when connected to the Scarlett 2i2

I have made sure the equipment works, and it does work. The audio, when ran through the headphone jack in the Scarlett 2i2, sounds perfectly good. I have altered playback and recording volume to the settings I had before getting a new laptop and updating audacity.

When I connected the actual mixing board to the laptop, and clicked record, and then played it back, I either got silence, or distorted warbles that vaguely resemble the sound of my drums. I figured this might be a problem with the USB port on my mixing board, so I am now running it through the audio interface, and it still produces the same problem regardless of what type of USB connection I am using (USB C or normal USB)

I have no earthly idea why this is happening, as even when I used the USB port on my audio mixer and plugged it into my previous laptop to record, this never happened, and probably wouldn’t happen if I used the Scarlett 2i2 either. I was using a previous version of Audacity on that old laptop though (Pre 3.0), so make of that what you will.

I do not know what the origin of this issue is, and I am super frustrated with trying to find it. With the information I’ve provided, maybe you guys could point me in the right direction and/or provide a solution to this issue. Asking follow up questions is expected, and I can provide any other information within reason.

2

Maybe you are recording the microphone built into your laptop? Make sure you’ve selected the correct USB Recording Device (Don’t select anything that says “loopback”).

If you are still using the same mixer (with USB) I don’t see any advantage to the Focusrite.

3

UPDATES AND CLARIFICATIONS:

So I ran more tests, and I may have neglected to mention a few things pre posting this to the forum, so bear with me.

Before posting this, I did test the FocusRite by speaking into one of the microphones, and it seemed to pick up the audio, but it was a little sketchy. I have also simply used the computer microphone on Audacity and it works fine. Clear audio, everything.

Today, I made sure I wasn’t insane, and tried to get to the bottom of this.

I plugged the mixing board directly into my laptop (normal USB port) and recorded. Same issue. No audio, or warbled bullshit if there was.

Then, I plugged the FocusRite in. Same thing. I even spoke into the microphones, and while it produced audio, it was a tad sketch.

I even just plugged the overheads into the Focusrite and spoke into them, and tried to play drums. Again, spoken audio was a little sketchy, and drum audio was non existent.

I even dicked with the settings in Audacity, making sure the “float” settings were the same as Windows. That did nothing.

So while I couldn’t fix the issue, my working theory is that there is an issue with the connection at some end. The equipment works, because if it didn’t, it wouldn’t produce clean audio in my headphones. Feel free to correct me or agree and suggest something, but I think this has something to do with either the microphones, the cables connecting the microphones to the equipment, or the USB connection.

Either way, I’m stumped and frustrated.

4

Make sure Windows “enhancements” are turned OFF for the USB device. That can cause all kinds of weird problems.

5

Turned the enhancements off, now it works like a charm. No issues at all. Thank you so much.