SCREAMING WITH FRUSTRATION

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Using Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
and Audacity 23O I think…it’s open at the moment and won’t let me see the version. Only one of TRILLIONS of massive
frustrations with this software.

I’m trying to find out how to record my voice using a microphone, pause the track, then record music from over the internet, pause,
record my voice, pause again, etc.

What I am finding is that appears to be impossible. I just recorded a track using my microphone, paused it, and the INPUT SOURCE TAB IS FROZEN.
I cannot resume recording from any different input source.

Yeah, I’m aware i could separately record tracks of microphone and tracks of internet and then go through the living shit hell of trying to understand how to splice them all together as one track. But why should that be necessary?

This is an incredibly UNFRIENDLY user interface.

2

“Help menu > About Audacity”


Not impossible, but probably not a good approach. What are you actually trying to do?


Try “stopping” rather than “pausing”.

3

bearcat22 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 7:45 pm
and won’t let me see the version
“Help menu > About Audacity”

bearcat22 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 7:45 pm
I’m trying to find out how to record my voice using a microphone, pause the track, then record music from over the internet, pause,
record my voice, pause again, etc.

What I am finding is that appears to be impossible.
Not impossible, but probably not a good approach. What are you actually trying to do?

bearcat22 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 7:45 pm
paused it, and the INPUT SOURCE TAB IS FROZEN.
Try “stopping” rather than “pausing”.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Confirmed that this is 2.3.0 version of Audacity.

Strange that it is not clear what I’m trying to do.
I want to create ONE TRACK from two differnt input types, without having to mess around with combining 74 tracks later on from these two sources: microphone, and internet.

What I have tried so far:
Start with input from Microphone, of my voice.
Stop ,

When I’ve tried STOP and when I resume it does NOT CONTINUE THE PREVIOUS TRACK OF MY VOICE IT CREATES A NEW
TRACK ENTIRELY.

So, since I don’t want to mess around having to later splice together multiple tracks, I LOGICALLY SIMPLY PAUSE
and then try to switch over the input source from microphone to intnernet.

But ALL of those options are FROZEN under Pause Recording!

This software is more complicated than flying a spaceship to Mars.

There has got to be a SIMPLE way to do this SIMPLE requirement.

4

bearcat22 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 7:45 pm
I’m trying to find out how to record my voice using a microphone, pause the track, then record music from over the internet, pause,
record my voice, pause again, etc.

What I am finding is that appears to be impossible.


Your reply:
Not impossible, but probably not a good approach. What are you actually trying to do?

My response:

Seriously? I cannot imagine this being MORE SIMPLE AND CRYSTAL CLEAR from what I have
already said in detail!!!

Want to Create ONE TRACK. This track will take input from a USB microphone, then pause the recording.

Then it will take input from the internet over a desktop Windows 7 PC, then pause the recording.

Then go back to input from USB microphone.

This is so CRYSTAL CLEAR I cannot even dream of any way that someone would not TOTALLY UNDERSTAND

5

Sorry but really DO need to RE post this

Person who responded may be good with software, but might
not be so good as SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY READING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

I am using Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit and Audacity 2.3.0

I am trying to create ONE TRACK.

I want this track to contain input from TWO SOURCES.

Input from a USB microphone attached by cable to a HP p6810f desktop computer.

Pause the recording / pause the track.

Then RESUME RECORDING within this exact same one track from ANOTHER SOURCE, the internet.

I’ve tried pausing, I’ve tried stopping.

At this point I can no longer even get it to play back ANY recording made from ANY source.

WTFFFFFF???

WTF???
Turn to the internet or youtube, and what do you get? Ninety six trillion posts and video on how to use Audacity.
All made by seven year old boys from Africa who can’'t really speak English.

not exactly what we need here…

6

Calm down, and please try to avoid profanities. This is a family friendly site.

Why? What is the objective?
You appear to be approaching the task in a manner that is bound to cause problems for yourself, but I can’t offer any advice about a better approach if you won’t tell us what the objective is.

Are you trying to make some sort of podcast? If so, what sort of podcast?
Are you trying to make a “music and chat” radio show?

Please forgive me if I’ve missed some details in your previous post, but I really don’t want to read your irate ranting. Take a bit of time to calm down, explain clearly what “the job” is, and I’m sure that there will be people on this forum happy to try and help.

7

You appear to be approaching the task in a manner that is bound to cause problems for yourself

What he said. Recording internet sound is a special case and requires specific intentional signal pathway management (or special hardware). That’s very different from recording your own microphone. That’s dead simple.

You can’t record from two different sources in Audacity (again, without very special considerations) and you certainly can’t switch sources in the middle of a recording.

Koz

8

Perhaps an external simple mixer with 2 inputs (micro & line-in) and 1 output (line-out) will likely solve the problem.
But this is just an idea. I am not expert in audacity or in audio recording/editing.

Edit:
I just read this post:
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/record-doesn-t-drop-to-next-track/52085/1
Its problem seems being the exact opposite of the one here :exclamation:

9

kozikowski, I dont’ think you carefully read everything.

As stated, I HAVE been able to record tracks taken from the internet, so how is that a “special case” as you say?

As complex and frustrating as this software is, I would think you could begin recording with a microphone, Pause or Stop,
then resume recording within that same track from the internet.

I’m simply asking how to do this.

What difference does it make what my ultimate goal is?
Ultimately I want to burn the tracks to an Audio CD or a DVD-R as MP3 Files

What I wish to avoid is the incredibly laborious process of recording all the microphone tracks
and all the internet tracks separately then having to figure out how to splice them together.

10

You are assuming it is simple. It’s not, and that is not because of Audacity, it’s because of the complexities of the WIndows sound system.

Have you managed to record from the Internet? If not, see: Tutorial - Recording audio playing on the computer - Audacity Manual
Note that it is often better to “download” rather than “record” from the Internet, but that depends on exactly what you are wanting to do (what the job is), which you refuse to tell us.

Have you managed to record from your microphone?
If not, you will need to say what microphone you are using, and how it is connected to your computer. This information is required because the Windows sound system handles different types of audio device in different ways, and both Audacity and Windows have to be configured correctly for the device.
You will also need to tell us what problem, including an exact quote of any error messages that you see. This is required because we can’t see your machine, and we only know what you tell us.

If you have successfully recorded from the Internet, and have successfully recorded from your microphone, and you know how to reliably reproduce those successes, then the procedure is:

  1. Start recording (microphone or Internet).
  2. Spacebar (stop recording)
  3. Change your Windows / Audacity settings as necessary for the other recording source.
  4. “Record” (or “R”) to continue recording.

I doubt that I would do it like this, because this sounds like a clumsy approach, but it’s what you asked for.

11

Steve, seriously.

Have you ACTUALLY READ my last post?

You are asking questions that I have ALREADY ANSWERED MORE THAN ONCE!!!

For example, I CLEARLY SAID that I have created tracks from the internet, have recorded from the internet, so WHY would you ask that?

12
13

Basically you just need to switch your input device (and possibly host too) in the Device toolbar to frecord
a) from the internet (probably with WASAPI loopback)
b) from the microphone

Audacity will only record at any time from whatever device you tell it to in the Device Toolbar.

See this page in the Manual: Device Toolbar - Audacity Manual

14

I think you want this:

Edit → Preferences… → Recording → uncheck Record on a new track

15

it’s open at the moment and won’t let me see the version.

Help > About?

If a Real time podcast is the goal, I did it with a small mixer. The machine on the right is the Skype machine and I’m talking to Denise on the east coast. I’m in California. I’m recording on the machine on the left and the left machine is playing the music. All real time.

The process doesn’t violate any sound pathway rules and worked straight out of the gate.

The show sound is a ratty mess because even though we’re both broadcast professionals, neither of us have done a show this way before. But it worked.

I didn’t clean this up, so it looks like more of a wreck than it’s supposed to.

Generic computers have one stereo output and one stereo input and to get a complex show, you have to either work around that (like I did), or use software that adds sound pathways and directions as needed.

If you do everything on one machine, keep in mind that the Hot Keys are going to get scrambled. “P” may be the Play key on your music system, but it’s Pause in Audacity. The spacebar has a pile of different functions.

If you are on Skype, they have a feature where they will record your calls.

We found something wrong with that and I don’t remember what it was.

Koz

16

Do you mean the post from “bearcat22”?
I see that your user name is very similar to the original poster, but this is a new account with a different email address, registered from a different ISP.