Greetings,
I am running Audacity 2.0.6 (installed from the .dmg installer) on a mac mini (late 2012) running OS 10.11.3.
Previously succeeded in recording audio into Audacity from a usb turntable.
Now needing to record from a TASCAM 122 tape cassette deck and I am stuck ever seeing any sound data coming in to the Recording or Playback Meters in the Meter Toolbar.
Following the steps beginning with “Tutorial - Copying tapes, LPs or MiniDiscs to CD”[1] and then in “How to set up Audacity”[2], and then “Tutorial - Recording Computer Playback on Mac”[3] I am working with Soundflower 2.0b2 - as explained in [3].
{ASIDE: It is not clear from [3] if, after uninstalling Soundflower 1.6.6b, rebooting, and then installing Soundflower 2.0b2 and running it, I still need to re-run 1.6.6b on top of 2.0b2. The instructions here are somewhat ambiguous.}
I’ve followed everything inside Install your chosen Soundflower version in [3], paying special close attention to steps 5 thru 13. And given what I saw before with recording from the usb turntable as input device, and the inlined image in step 13, I understand I am missing some essential step/clue as I never get to see any recording volume levels inside the View Meters.
What am I missing?
Many thanks!
Does your Mini have stereo analog connections like these two?
If so, you don’t need any of that stuff. Connect the RCA outputs of the cassette machine (if available) to the circle with two black arrows socket.
Play a tape. Apple (upper left) > System Preferences > Sound > Input: built-in Input.
Do you see the bouncing sound meter?
Koz
Where do you get stuck? If the Mac can’t find the sound, that’s full stop until we find out why. Audacity gets its sound from the Mac.
Koz
Thank you Koz –
Does your Mini have stereo analog connections like these two?
Yes, and yes I have the RCA jacks into the mini plug cables feeding OUTPUT from the cassette deck into the Line In jack on the mac mini.
AND Yes when I do:
Apple=>System Preferences->Sound->Input: Line In
I DO see the bouncing sound input meter going inside this SysPrefs->Sound->Input window, and if I slide the Input volume slider to the right the bouncing sound indicators fill up more of the 15 “lights” representing the view meter and if I slide the input volume slider to the left the bouncing sound indicators fall back to less of the 15 “lights”.
Great Question:
“Where do you get stuck? If the Mac can’t find the sound, that’s full stop until we find out why.
Audacity gets its sound from the Mac.”
I have the Headphones (Line Out) mini jack going to a stereo amplifier that comes out thru AUX into stereo speakers.
I get stuck in that I can see the bouncing input meter inside SysPrefs->Sound->Input window and when I go back to SysPrefs->Sound->Output and change back from [Soundflower (2ch)] to [Headphones], and then I go to a youtube page and hit play, I can hear the output from Firefox just fine. But I can’t hear the sounds that ARE coming in from the tape deck and registering on the input meter inside SysPrefs->Sound->Input.
ALSO: I forgot to mention in my initial post that I also tried following a lead mentioned somewhere in the Audacity manual about using LineIn - which I downloaded from https://www.rogueamoeba.com/freebies/ and ran. No luck with this path either.
I see where this is going.
Self Recording, that is, recording Music Playing on the Computer (YouTube, etc) is different and takes different settings than simple recording from a sound device like a cassette machine. So lets forget all about SoundFlower for a while and concentrate on recording a tape.
Launch Audacity and using the Device Toolbar, select Built-In Input (Stereo) for recording. This is the only illustration I have for that and the one in the on-line instructions is for Windows.
Press Record in Audacity. Press play on the tape machine. The Audacity recording sound meters should start bouncing. You are now making a recording whether or not you can hear it.
Do you get it that far?
Koz
Great Great Great – (something so simple I fooled myself getting tangled up in complexity that wasn’t necessary…).
I did just as you advised Koz –
Launch Audacity and using the Device Toolbar, select Built-In Input (Stereo) for recording.
This is the only illustration I have for that and the one in the on-line instructions is for Windows.Press Record in Audacity. Press play on the tape machine. The Audacity recording sound meters
should start bouncing. You are now making a recording whether or not you can hear it.Do you get it that far?
Yes. This works just fine. AND, I can actually hear it thru the speakers.
The only thing I wish was different is I am only recording into one channel/track. I THOUGHT the mini plug going into the mac mini is a stereo plug – which has female RCA jacks on the other end. I have the buttons in the Device Toolbar set to [Core Audio], [Built-in Output] and [Built-in Input] and in the fourth selection button I’ve tried both [1 (Mono) Recording Channels] as well as [2 (Stereo) Recording Channels] and in either case I only see sound filling into one of two channels/tracks. There are 2 view meters on the cassette deck and each slightly different in what it registers. I’d like to get both of those channels into Audacity. I’m not very experienced with it and expect there is something else I need to set to get the sound into both Audacity channels/tracks (?).
Thanks very much
2.0.6 is old now. You can get the current 2.1.2 from http://audacityteam.org/download/mac.
You do not have to re-run Soundflower 1.6.6b. I will make that a little clearer for the next release of the Manual.
Which Audacity channel has the sound - the upper one (left)? Make sure the RCA connections are tight.
Make sure in /Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup that the audio input is set to 2-ch.
Gale
My particular application was a mono microphone and that’s the Audacity I used for the illustration. Yours should say 2 (Stereo). You know you’re getting actual stereo because the bouncing light sound meters will not exactly match and if you zoom into the two blue waves, they won’t match, either.
Audacity 2.1.2 has very much better sound meters than earlier versions. With a little clicking and dragging of the left and right control points, you can make them go across the whole Audacity window, making it much easier to see what you’re doing.
Koz
Thank you Koz and Gale.
I was using a mono mini plug and have replaced it with a stereo plug found after minimal rummaging.
I am also now running 2.1.2 which, YES, has much more accessible view meters.
I am all set and very grateful for your help and for this fantabulous software platform. Magnificent.
Many thanks!
Dave
If you need to copy the incoming sound from the cassette to your amplifier, the simplest way is to use “Line In”, a free application from Rogue Amoeba:
https://rogueamoeba.com/freebies/
Soundflower can do that to, as can JackOSX, but both require configuration.