Recording with three mics at once issue?

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

I’m attempting to record a podcast with three people in audacity.
I’m using two xlr audio technica atr2100 microphones
and a blue yeti usb microphone as well, with all 3 being filtered through an akai eie audio interface.
The program however only seems to be able to record the two xlr mics by themselves or usb mic by itself never simultaneously
even though the interface should be sending them through one channel.
I’ve checked in preferences to make sure that it has eie in the devices tab as well. Does anyone know how to have audacity record all three at once?

Thanks!

2

No. It’s not a USB sound mixer. It’s an analog mixer with a built-in USB hub. The analog mixer qualifies as one “device” and anything else you plug in to the USB ports qualifies as a separate device. Audacity will only record from one device at a time.

You can add Windows software to record from multiple USB devices and I thought it got added to the wiki, but I can’t find it. Looking.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_recording_how_to_s.html#twomics

Here it is:

https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-can-i-record-using-2-mics/34647/9

Koz

3

Thank you for clearing that up for me and finding the links as well. Much appreciated !

4

You do have the possibility of USB Drift. The analog microphones all turn into digital in one place inside the mixer so they’re OK, but USB microphones turn into digital internally or separate, so it’s possible for the mixer and the USB microphone to drift out of time with each other.

Multiple USB microphone combinations have this problem. It’s possible that you won’t notice it, but it’s much more likely that on a long show you may get echoes as each microphone picks up the “wrong” voice early or late. In extreme cases, it could sound like the guests are interrupting each other when that’s not how the show went.

Koz