A good day to all. 
I am running Windows 7 on an ASUS B43S laptop. I installed Audacity from .exe.
I have been using Audacity for a while and she’s done me no wrong. Great program for recording acoustic and electric music and multitracking. A few weeks ago I went out and bought myself and nice quality USB microphone, an Audiotechnica AT-2020. Plugged it in and selected it from the microphone drop-down box and had a great time recording.
But today, Audacity won’t recognize my mic. Usually I have to select the 2020 from the drop box rather than the default laptop mic, which sounds terrible. But the drop box won’t even list my microphone! I know it’s not the mic, because it lights up blue when the computer recognizes the hardware. This has happened before, and each time I just unplug and replug the mic and restart Audacity.
I have tried everything - restarting Audacity, restarting my computer, different USB ports; all to no avail. My last hope is that someone on here will have an idea of what to do.
Thank you!
The reason restarting Audacity normally works is Audacity only checks for USB microphones at startup. You can also Transport > Rescan Audio Devices to cause Audacity to go out and look any time. If neither of those works, then the connection to the computer may have failed. Can you try another USB port?
Does the microphone show up in Windows Control panels with Audacity closed?
Can you make a recording with the Windows Sound Recorder?
– Windows Sound Recorder
– Start > Programs > Accessories > Entertainment
That’s where it used to be. Win7 may have put it somewhere else.
This has happened before, and each time I just unplug and replug the mic and restart Audacity.
The USB connection may have finally bit the big one. USB connections aren’t supposed to just “forget” what they were doing.
It’s possible that the blue light just means the USB five volt battery is working, not that the data got established. Is that what the instructions said? Is the USB connection underneath the microphone in in good shape? Can you try another cable?
~~ Time Passes ~~
So the blue light tells you where the front of the microphone is and indicates that power is arriving from the computer. It’s not a data or sound indicator.
Koz