Audacity Forum

I am trying to switch from Cakewalk Pyro to Audacity. I have "Creative SB Live! Series" unfortunately and I'm pretty sure that, when I start the feature in the program I'm trying to record from, "Creative SB Live! Series" switches from "Stereo Mix" to "Microphone". I don't have a microphone and don't want to use it; I just want to switch back to "Stereo Mix" which is coming directly from my computer. In Cakewalk Pyro I have an option to "Open Windows Mixer" which opens up "Record Control" and switch form "Microphone" to "Stereo Mix" to correct the problem but I can't find it in Audacity and don't want to open up Cakewalk Pyro for that one option every time I open Audacity, because it's daunting enough having to switch to "Stereo Mix" all the time, or I might as well use Cakewalk Pyro. Is there an option like that in Audacity I can open and use?

Also, the sound I'm trying to record goes on and off and isn't constant at all so as you can imagine my file sizes are through the roof when it's nothing but dead air. Cakewalk Pyro has an option to edit it and cut dead silence out but its inaccurate when you're editing three hour long files just to get out little ten minutes of silence here and there and it would take forever to nitpick and edit all of the little one minutes of silence and ten seconds of silence out but it all adds up to make the file size bigger when you combine them than the major sections of dead air I record. So I want to know if I can transfer these old files to Audacity and use some kind of option to eliminate dead air or very low volume and hard-drive consuming sounds.

According to Cakewalk Pyro, I only have five hours of recording available and my recordings usually exceed Cakewalk Pyro three hour limit. I don't have money for a CD to save them on; So I really need to compress these files badly. I can't take this anymore, and neither can my hard-drive. Please reply if you can help. Thank you.

You can open Windows Volume control --Start--Programs--Accessories Entertainment--Volume Control.
Once open hit Options--Properties and check the recording button (make sure the options you want to see are checked) and click OK. I also have a SB live soundcard in Audacity choose Wave/MP3 or "What you hear".

To select the source that Audacity uses, change it in the Edit -> Preferences -> Audio I/O menu. You shouldn't need to fiddle with the Microsoft mixer at all unless the only source you can select is Microsoft Sound Mapper (let us know if that's the case).

Unfortunately, there is no way to get Audacity to auto-record when it sees a signal (unless you build a special piece of hardware that emulates keyboard strokes, possible, but quite difficult). You can export your files as MP3s and delete all the .aup and _data folders that make up your recording Projects.

I also don't know of a Remove Silence effect for use with Audacity, but it could exist.

What are you trying to record? Number Stations?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_stations

I just got 2 replies thank you every one.

Sorry for the late reply, I have abandoned Audacity for something else but the recording I've built up are 60.0 GB so I desperately need to switch to Audacity so I need to ask how do I make my files really small, small enough to take all the 60.0 GB total files and make them 1 GB total? Also I really need some way to eliminate dead air rather than manually because it goes from sound for 60 seconds of dead air to 15 seconds of talking on average so 90% of most of my recordings are dead air on standby for sound. I bet that I can change 60 minutes into 6 minutes If I could kill all the dead air and low sounds. I basically want silence or very soft sounds killed. Like if I manually remove the sound I'd begin the cut at the end of the first sound wave to the start of the next sound wave and repeat. To do this manually I'd have to remove about 1000 of these spaces per session and probably not very clean cut or efficiently. So I could use a program like that to do it automatically. Also I'd like to know how to not have my Windows software make any sounds. Like those obnoxious noises when you get an error message. I do not want windows to make any sounds at all when any messages warnings or prompts come up. Either that or have some automatic way of removing inevitable sounds of messages out of my recordings.

But the window I need says "Record Control" not "Playback Control" and, this is hard to explain, but every time I get ready to record it switches from "Stereo Mix" to "Microphone" and I have to re-check or re-select "Stereo Mix" in order to record what I'm trying to record. Even when I make my Device "Creative SB Live! Series" Instead of "Microsoft Sound Mapper - Output" How do I choose Wave/MP3 or "What you hear"? I'm kind of new at this.

It's okay if Audacity doesn't auto-record when loud sounds or significant sounds occur, as long as I can remove all silence once that recording is finished. Export? You mean Save? How do I export them all as MP3s and delete the .aup and _data folders? Also, while I'm recording I want them to be small file size and I don't care too much about the quality as long as you understand the sounds and it's not way out there and still yields good-quality mp3s, but smaller files. I'm not recording a professional song or music where 10 songs take up a whole 1 GB CD at all. As long as it's not horrible.

Number Stations? Maybe...

Please help me on recordings. Please help, need to make smaller .mp3s of my recordings.

it seems my requests for truncating silence was answered in the beta

http://www.geocities.com/lololbass/TRUNCATESILENCE.JPG

my question now is what are the ideal settings for it?