Audacity will not record.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I haven't used Audacity since I bought my new computer a little over a year ago. I tried to use it today and I couldn't get it to record. I've followed the tutorials online, etc. without any luck (except bad). I've gone to Preferences. My only choices for Playback and Recording are Microsoft Sound Mapper, Realtek HD Audio Input, and Modem #1 Line. I've tried every combination of these. No soap. Now what? Please keep in mind I'm a computer challenged Senior with ADD (seriously) so please reply in simple, step by step English.

My machine is an Acer Veriton with a Realtek soundcard and is running XP Pro.

Thanks,

Jeannie

[steve]

Audacity 1.2.6 is pretty old now and there are problems appearing on newer hardware, which are not going to get fixed as the new "stable" version of Audacity (2.0) is due to be released soon,

I would recommend that you download and install Audacity 1.3 from here: http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_windows

Go into the Preferences (from the Edit menu) and select "Windows DirectSound" as the "Host" and "Primary Sound Driver" for both recording and playback.

When you have done that, look for a loudspeaker icon in the bottom right corner of your desktop (near the clock) and double click on it to open up the mixer. If the loudspeaker icon is a yellowish colour, then that is the Windows Mixer. If it is brown, then it is the Realtek mixer (it could be either). In the (whichever) mixer, there is a section for setting the recording inputs and you need to set it to use the input that you intend to record from (which you haven't told us).

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Thanks, Steve. I'll check it out later ( have to run in a bit). Btw, the only three recording sources I ever use are from the sound card (such as when streaming audio drom the internet or recording the sound from a video), from a mike, and, very rarely, from a CD.

Jeannie