Audacity Forum

I have been using audacity for several months now. When I first started, I had no difficulty whatsoever. I plugged in a mic, and went to town. Now all of a sudden my computer is not recognizing any mics, and I'm getting a flatline. I've tried every troubleshooting idea I've come up with. I've also had the same problem on two different work computers. Anyone else experiencing this? I"m flabbergasted. It just went from working, to not, with no reason or explanation. I can still listen to previous recordings on audacity, but i cannot do anything new.

I've done the hardware test and all that, and the computer is not picking up the mic for some reason. Same with all computers I've tried. Is there some stupid simple setting I"m missing or something???

ok now i have a new wrinkle to my problem. I managed to get some recording to come through. It is delayed and echoey upon recording, and I have no effects set. I don't even think you can do that until AFTER you've recorded something....

Has no one else experienced anything like this??? I don't know what else to do here, I hope someone will read this and have a suggestion or two. Perhaps my sound card is the problem?

Do you have the right input selected in Audacity's edit -> preferences -> audio i/o menu? Your computer won't know what input to look at unless you tell it which one you want. It often defaults to mic, but if you plug or unplug certain USB devices, this default is often reset.

Alternately, your operating system should be able to tell you if it's seeing your mic. Check Window's Control Panel and poke around in that software for a bit.

Echo-y recording can usually be fixed by wearing headphones while recording. Alternately, make sure you're using the right input, and turn off "Software Playthrough" in Audacity's edit -> preferences -> audio i/o menu.

The playthrough tip above will solve your echo problem--so will turning down playback volume on the mixer toolbar while recording.

THanks for the tips guys...I have actually poked around in all of those menus, and tried settings every which way. It's not echoey recording from hearing playback in the mic. I literally have a one second delay from the mic to the computer, and a bunch of echo, or maybe it's considered delay. That's WITH headphones. No sound coming out of the speakers, a blank project. I have explored all the prefences, gone into audio settings, added every volume option there is. The regular mic input does not work whatsoever. It's the USB out that is giving me the delay. I don't get any sound with the generic sound recorder, or a hardware test either, so I doubt Audacity itself is the problem. Do I have a fried soundcard or something? I can still HEAR sounds....

What kind of a microphone do you have? Is it a USB mic, a professional XLR mic, or a little computer mic with a 3-conductor jack plug?

It really sounds like the mic is dead or dying. I can't explain why it's giving you a 1 second delay though, I would expect you to get nothing out of it at all if it's really dead.

alatham wrote:What kind of a microphone do you have? Is it a USB mic, a professional XLR mic, or a little computer mic with a 3-conductor jack plug?

It really sounds like the mic is dead or dying. I can't explain why it's giving you a 1 second delay though, I would expect you to get nothing out of it at all if it's really dead.

Well, I have an XLR mic, and that does nothing. No reason for it to be dead. I also have a USB headset/mic combo, and that is the one giving delay. It makes no sense, because everything worked fine before. I recorded a bunch of stuff with the heaset mic, cheesy as that is.

This all happened after a reformat, maybe I am missing drivers. I really wish I could get this to work, I have so much fun with it!!

This all happened after a reformat, maybe I am missing drivers.

Bingo! I'd bet you're either missing driver software, or your driver software isn't set up properly.

alatham wrote:

This all happened after a reformat, maybe I am missing drivers.

Bingo! I'd bet you're either missing driver software, or your driver software isn't set up properly.

This, however, does not explain why I have the exact same issues on two completely separate computers at work. Unfortunately I simply do not have time to mess with it. The bottom line is, no computer I currently have access to recognizes the front pink mic input. It isn't even Audacity, the sound recorder and hardware test doesn't detect it either.