My sanity has taken a bit of a battering trying to make sense of Audacity , I have Ubuntu Linux ,H2 drum program and a Roland gr30 guitar synth , the midi drum track I wrote I have yet to make it play in Audacity , it seems to appear in the sequence window , and even seemed to be playing , but no sound , my guitar synth is making sound through the line in audio feed from the line out on Gr30 , but I can’t get it to trigger the metres in Audacity , can’t get Audacity to record the synth sound , despite the fact that it is being generated by the computer , an audio sound , and I can not get Audacity to register it anyway I try ? , it is my fault , I have no idea what I am doing , I have wasted so many hours trying to make sens eo f this thing , I have an album ready to if I can just learn how to use Audacity
I’ve tried reading your post three times and I still don’t have a clear picture of what you are doing. Let’s break it down a bit.
- Does your drum track play in Hydrogen and can you hear it?
- In Audacity, if you import an audio file, or generate a sound (the Generate menu) and press the Play button, does it play and can you hear it?
- In detail, how is your GR30 connected to your computer?
- Are you using Jack? (do you understand what this question means?)
Hi thank you for your response , I have used jack before to connect electric piano to Zynsubx sound library , I tried to use jack to connect sound card to Audacity , Audacity did not come up as a option , I can play the drum track in H2 , I have exported it to my documents , under root in unbuntu , it plays fine from Hydrogen , my guitar synth sounds fine in through the sound card line in , from the audio out on my gr30 , so how do I get Audacity to respond to the sounds the computer is making ? , I have just destroyed another copy of unbuntu , about 4 or 5 now , I had what seemed to be the drum trak IMPORTED from Audacity , as aposed to exported from Hydrogen , but no sound as the bar scrolled through what seemd to be the track ? , does Audacity need its own driver , I have had to load the driver for sound card , before the computer would make any noise , Heres what I would like to learn , 1 , how to convert h2 drum track to audio file , record it seems to be the obvious option , and 2 , how do I get Audacity to respond to whatever is playing , any help and headway would be greatly apreciated .
Hi Godfree, could you write future posts in paragraphs or bullet points. It’s difficult to read and understand when you write as one long sentence.
“H2” is “Hydrogen drum machine”?
What did you export to your documents? A WAV file from Hydrogen?
What is “under root in ubuntu”?
How do you know that? What is connected where? How are you listening to “the sound card line in”?
Imagine that I want to reproduce your exact set-up. What do I need to do?
Hi , ok lets take them one at a time
I have no problem writing drum patterns in Hydrogen , they are a midi file , I have failed to export the file to Audacity and make it play , I try midi , raw data , the result is the same , it does not play
question , how do I record said midi file as audio , something Audacity will play I pressume
What I am thinking at the mo is I need to loop my soundcard out to it;s in ,? , or to another pc , question ,
do I really need to look at two computers and two versions of Ubuntu just to make a copy of an audio sound ,?
can Audacity make a audio copy of Hydrogen playing a midi file , the sound card out is conected to my stereo , but it is an audio signal , why can;t Audacity find it ?
What version of Ubuntu? What version of Audacity? See the pink panel at the top of the page.
Audacity does not play or record MIDI directly. You can convert MIDI to audio using TiMidity++ or if you can hear the MIDI file on your computer you record it playing as audio.
See this page: Missing features - Audacity Support for details.
In any case you can export from Hydrogen as WAV according to its manual http://www.hydrogen-music.org/hcms/node/5, so why not do that? Then import the WAV into Audacity.
Gale
“Sound card out” is not an input. You have to use pulseaudio volume control to present the output as a “monitor” input that can be recorded.
I think recording MIDI playback in real time is your worst and slowest option but if you want to know how to record computer playback, see Recording Computer Playback on Linux.
Gale
From Hydrogen you need to export “Song”. This will create a WAV file which can be imported into Audacity using “File menu > Import > Audio”.
You are being a greathelp and I appreciate you taking the time , you mentioned if I can hear the drum track I can record it , yes I can make the drum track go in Linux Ubuntu version 3.3 which includes Hydrogen drum program , not machine ? ,
so after I have started H2 drum program , do I then bring up Audacity , and import signal , ? , how please , how do I get Audacity to record what I can hear playing ,
and yes thankyou for the midi conversion thing , never heard of it before I shall try it that way to , as it would seem Audacity will let me drag and drop a audio file into its sequence window ,?
what you have said in these replies is making sense to me , I am stressed and scared to even try most of the time , it is not only copies of Ubuntu I keep killing but the hard drive is also dead , so have copy of last drum track ,
but can;t work out how to import it to Hydrogen
There is no Ubuntu “3.3” version.
You don’t want to record the MIDI file. You want to Export > Song in Hydrogen which gives you a WAV file. Then start Audacity and drag the WAV file into Audacity.
Gale
Hi , in an attempt to make some progress I went back to my old computer and grabbed the wav file drum and then a guitar track , songs I had done , so yes I had put it in the correct wav file and then got my computer to hear my guitar pugged into the input on my sound card , to ad the extra track , the said wav files play in both Audacity or Reaper , so , yes I need to follow above instructions to relearn how to create wav file , but now still cannot get computer/Audacity to register my guitar audio signal via the input on my sound card,.
Any ideas as to how to get my line in to trigger the vu,s , the recording levels in Audacity so I can ad some more tracks to the wav files I have ?
I tried timidity , but could not make sense of it , have reminded myself of the process with help from here , cheers , I have just saved drum track as , song , then imported to Audacity as wave file , still can;t get Audacity to respond to line in , I will never be able to ad more tracks if it won;t hear the line in , any ideas please ?
If you want to record directly from GR30 (if you are still using that) you have to connect from its Mix Out to the computer. Audacity does not record MIDI. Please tell us exactly how you are connecting the guitar to the computer. How many audio inputs does the computer have?
Mix Out of the GR30 should be connected to the line-in of the computer, not to the microphone input.
Usually the best method on Ubuntu is to install PulseAudio Volume Control (pavucontrol), use pavucontrol to select the audio input you are connected to, then choose the “pulse” recording device in Audacity’s Device Toolbar.
If you need more help, I suggest you tell us accurately the exact version of Ubuntu you have (not “3.3”), the exact Audacity version (all three numbers, see the pink panel at the top of the page), and post the information from Help > Audio Device Info… top right of Audacity (so we can see what audio devices you have).
Gale
Can anyone tell me if I need to engage Jack to record line in in Audacity , using Ubuntu Studio
Gale , your fabulous , yes I am using the gr30 , stereo audio out “mix out” into the mini stereo jack line in on my old Ensonic sound card , I go online with windows 10 laptop , has power plug issue keeps cutting out , the joys of being poor and buying cheap , so I would have to save this pulseadio file to flashdrive or something , I am not good at such tasks , I maneged to record the guitar straight in and using mic on guitar amp , ?with Unbuntu studio an older version , I will go and check my versions now
I have Audacity version , 1,3,11-beta , and Puppy Studio 3 , , if pulseadio thing you metioned is what I need , isn;t that the new jack or replaces jack , so I should be using jack to connect sound card to ? , system? ,
Audacity 1.3.11 is obsolete and no longer supported.
Puppy Studio 3 is obsolete and no longer maintained http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyStudio
If you are not an expert with Computers and with Linux, I would strongly suggest that you use a modern, mainstream and well supported Linux distribution.
Why can’t you get online with this Linux computer?
There are some more recent versions of Audacity for Puppy Linux here: http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Audacity.
I really would not use Jack if you are not knowledgeable about computers.
If you want more help I suggest you post the information from Help > Audio Device Info… from top right of Audacity, as I suggested before.
Gale