Hey, everybody. I just got a Presonus USB96 interface, and I was really excited to start recording some bass riffs, but sadly I’m having trouble recording. Occasionally, about 1 every 10 tries, after I hit the record button, Audacity will freeze for about 5 to 10 seconds and then it will begin recording just fine. But the rest of the time I will hit record and it freezes indefinitely. I sat and waited for 15 minutes and it still didn’t budge. It just sits idle with two red triangles in the top left, and when I hit stop it leaves me with no recording at all. I tried updating to the latest version of Audacity (2.4.2), but it didn’t help. Any thoughts about what might be causing this? I’m using Windows 10, and I believe I have everything hooked up correctly. I have my bass going into a series of three pedals, and I have a line out coming from the third pedal into the front of my interface, and I have the interface connected via USB cable into the back of my PC, and I’ve selected the device in Audacity as my microphone.
We can take the easy one first. Are the USB connections all the way in and does it do the same thing with a different computer USB connection? Any change is significant. If you change USB connections and the problem gets much worse, it’s good to know that.
Is the Presonus power light on and/or does it flicker?
Has the Presonus ever worked? On anybody’s computer?
Audacity doesn’t get sound from the Presonus. It gets it from Windows. Close Audacity.
Open the Windows sound control panels from the little speaker icon lower right > Recording.
You should have an icon or indicator that is the Presonus. Some devices have a custom name for this. Some don’t. It could say something like USB Audio CODEC. It might have a bouncing sound meter. Does it bounce when you play?
Do you use Zoom or other chat applications, are you a gamer? Do you like to record YouTube or other internet music? Do you use Cloud Storage? All of them could mess with sound connections and cause problems. Take them in any order.
Koz