I’d like to know whether it is possible to use seperate volumes for the Stereo Mix input and the output I get through my headphones.
I’m recording a digital piano using Audacity and since the Stereo Mix recording isn’t of great quality I have to set the Windows volume as high as possible and the mic sensitivity as low as possible in order to reduce noise. But of course I also want to listen to myself while and recording and not get deaf!
My current solution is to duplicate the output to 2 stereo channels, 1 stereo going to a seperate device that allows me to lower the volume for listening. But would it also be possible to do without the aid of an external device?
Is the stereo mix live and you must play against it there and then? If you can save the stereo mix recording to WAV or find a better source for the song you can import the song into Audacity, edit it to make it sound better, then enable Transport > Overdub which lets you play the keyboard while listening to the song.
Sorry, I left out a bit of crucial information that made it very confusing.
My digital piano is connected to my PC and outputs a MIDI signal, that is fed to sampling software, in my case Kontakt. I want to record the audio output of that program. So mp song is involved, just the piano. No external microphone is used either, just the Stereo Mix", which I believe is internal.
The Kontakt output is fine. My integrated sound card just isn’t very good even while I’m using “Stereo Mix”. But the good news is, is that I just tried recording on my laptop and the quality is way better (practically no noise). I also noticed that it isn’t really necessary to duplicate the stereo. I can just connect my headphones to the normal stereo output of my PC and connect it to another device to control the volume.
However, the problem is still the same: I have to use an external device to control the volume while, ideally, I’d like to have seperate volumes for “Stereo Mix” and the headphones output. Is this at all possible?
The achieved level of stereo mix recording and the output level depend on each other. Turn the output down and you will have a silent stereo mix recording on Windows Vista and later.
Windows XP had separate Wave and Master output sliders so you could make stereo mix recordings without having to hear them.
What is it you want to hear (as well as stereo mix) that stereo mix is drowning out?
Do your headphones have a volume control?
Have you tried recording with SoundLeech or Audacity’s Windows WASAPI streaming recorder (see the Tutorial link I gave you). You should be able to make recordings with SoundLeech without having to hear them (if you can get SoundLeech to work).
On my Windows 7 machine WASAPI records at a fixed level irrespective of the output level (like SoundLeech). So I can still record even if I turn the Master volume slider down to zero and so cannot hear any audio that is playing.
What is it you want to hear (as well as stereo mix) that stereo mix is drowning out?
Do your headphones have a volume control?
Like I said, it’s just a matter of the output of my headphones being too loud. Unfortunately, they don’t have their own volume controls.
On my Windows 7 machine WASAPI records at a fixed level irrespective of the output level (like SoundLeech). So I can still record even if I turn the Master volume slider down to zero and so cannot hear any audio that is playing.
Hmm… that’s interesting. I tried SoundLech but it doesn’t create any recording file. In Audacity, when I set the audio device to WASAPI, it doesn’t start recording, and when I run Kontakt and the same time, it throws up the “error while opening sound device” error. Also, I think I’m supposed to see all kinds op “loopback” options in the input droplist, but I don’t see anything related to that.
You are supposed to see input (loopback) options for each device that appears in the output section of Device Toolbar. What input options are there when you choose WASAPI?
In Audacity, Generate > Tone… and accept the defaults. Set Project Rate to 44100 Hz. Look in the Transport Menu and make sure “Overdub” is checked (ticked). Now Record using WASAPI. Does that record?
WASAPI loopback can only run if the device playing the audio is in shared mode. If Kontakt requires to take exclusive control of the audio device for playback, Audacity won’t be able to record from it under WASAPI. This wouldn’t be a problem with for example Windows Media Player.
Right-click over the speaker icon by the system clock, then choose “Playback Devices”. Right-click over the playback device you use, then choose “Properties”. Then click the “Advanced” tab and try unchecking both “Exclusive Mode” boxes if they are checked.
Thank you very much! I’ve gone countless of times through all of the settings you mentioned, but until now I probably hadn’t had them all looking in the right direction.
There’s still one small catch though: I use the ASIO4ALL in Kontakt in order to reduce latency. With WASAPI, the latency is 20ms versus 4.5ms with ASIO4ALL. When I switch over to ASIO4ALL in Kontakt I get the familiar “Error when opening…” error.
But my guess is this cannot be overcome right?
If so, it becomes choice between recording with some noise, some more hassle but with very little latency or recording with no noise, no hassle but with an annoying latency…
EDIT
Another thing: If my recording device (Stereo Mix) supports up to 16 bits 192000 Hz, does that mean I have to set my output device and Audacity to the same values? (Instead of setting them to e.g. 24 bits.)
It’s probably preferable, but in practice a rate mismatch between the playback device and recording device rarely causes a problem on Windows (it can cause speed problems on Linux).
In any case if you choose Windows DirectSound host in Audacity and have both Exclusive Mode boxes checked, the Windows Default Format settings are disregarded in favour of the Audacity settings.
If you use WASAPI you should only record at 44100 Hz project rate - the quality may suffer otherwise.
Well, there may be some reason stereo mix is poor quality - perhaps you do not have the correct drivers for the device
I’m ‘afraid’ my drivers are fine and up to date. I have a Dell Studio XPS 8100 that uses an ALC887 soundcard. I’ve downloaded the latest driver here: http://www.realtek.cz/realtek-download.php?realtek=ALC887&system=7. The soundcard is fine, I just get some noise when I record in MME and DirectSound mode.
So do you now have both “Exclusive Mode” boxes checked?
In any case if you choose Windows DirectSound host in Audacity and have both Exclusive Mode boxes checked, the Windows Default Format settings are disregarded in favour of the Audacity settings.
I haven’t, neither the speakers nor the microphone. But it probably wouldn’t be of much use to me, since I wouldn’t use DirectSound because of the noise.
If you use WASAPI you should only record at 44100 Hz project rate - the quality may suffer otherwise.
Could you elaborate on that? Does the audio quality get worse, more glitches etc…?
Audacity cannot record or play to ASIO devices, unless you compile Audacity yourself with ASIO support - it’s a licensing problem.
So did Dell send you to that site because they no longer provide drivers for the XPS 8100? Normally you should get drivers from Dell.
My guess was that WASAPI would be more likely to record from Kontakt (without ASIO) if you unchecked Exclusive Mode. But I don’t know why you could not get WASAPI to work before.
Yes, there could be a strong possibility of glitches. And worse quality by resampling.
Alright, I just compiled Audacity with ASIO and… it kind of doesn’t work.
The good news is that the ASIO driver is displayed in each of the input/output droplists in Audacity, and that the driver automatically pops up as a tray icon when I record/playback something. The bad news is that it’s absolutely silent. When recording, it records a silent track (visually as well as auditory) and when playing something, I hear only silence. That said, its behavior is 100% normal in that I don’t get any error messages or other weird stuff.
FYI: In ASIO, I only activate the “Realtek HD Audio output” device for Kontakt and the “Realtek HD Audio Mic input” device for Audacity. I’ve also done the testing using the latest Realtek driver, the latest Dell driver and the default Windows driver.
You’ve done well to compile Audacity, so congratulations.
Are you using ASIO4ALL?
If your intention is to record Kontakt, why would you choose a mic input? And why do you suppose stereo mix will have no noise under ASIO4ALL?
And why is the latency a problem, assuming you are still recording only the keyboard? Why can’t you hardware monitor using the phones jack in the keyboard? Or are you trying to listen to (and record) something other than what you are actually playing?
In your position (assuming I had some reason to use Kontakt) I would just record from stereo mix using the intended Dell driver, and buy headphones with a volume control. If there is too much noise, I would fix the driver, or get Dell to fix the device or give you a USB sound card.
Thank you! The “help” component failed though, but I can live with that for now.
Yes, I’m using ASIO4ALL. I’m a bit confused about your post, because I’m not sure if you’re implying that ASIO4ALL isn’t going to work with Audacity.
The reason that I want to use ASIO4ALL is simple: It allows me to play through a virtual instrument with very little latency. I could use the direct sound output of my keyboard for monitoring, but that’d be simply less enjoyable than say, through a Steinway virtual instrument.
As to how I’m going to make ASIO4ALL work with Audacity and how well it’s going to work if it’s working, I’m not really sure. If you’ve ever got it work, or know someone who did, I’d love to hear it!
If it doesn’t work out with ASIO4ALL and I still want to use it, you’re right that I then probably should just record from stereo mix (which I interpret as MME or DirectSound) and try to fix the audio device or buy a new one to get rid of the noise.
I see no way ASIO4ALL will work with WASAPI loopback because loopback isn’t seen as a selectable device in the Windows mixer.
On my machine ASIO4ALL seems to use the WDM-KS “muxed in” terminology for inputs so I can select “muxedin3” which happens to be stereo mix (though Audacity sees it as a second “muxedin1” when WDM-KS is selected). Having selected “muxedin3” I can then record from stereo mix through ASIO4ALL.
But I know of other people where no stereo mix equivalent shows up in ASIO4ALL and I don’t know enough about ASIO4ALL to comment about it. You could try the ASIO4ALL forums if you need help.
