Audacity Forum

I just installed Audacity, and I'm recording an electronic keyboard thru a USB converter.

Ican't hear anything during recording or playback, but I can see the waveform being generated in Audacity.

I checked my computer's "audio panel", and nothing's muted. the "digital input" has the volume turned up.

Any ideas? I'm sure it's some kind of dumb setting that I've overlooked.

Thanks!

You are not using the "digital input" (that's for spdif or similar on your sound card). You are using the USB input.
Make sure that you connect the USB audio input and allow it to initialize before you start Audacity. You should then see a USB device listed in "Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O".

If your USB audio interface has inputs and outputs, you need to connect the audio output of your keyboard to the audio input of your USB audio device, and the output of your USB audio device to an amplifier and speakers (or headphones if it has a headphone socket). You will then set Audacity to use the USB audio device for both Recording and Playback.

Thank you for the response. Under Audacity preferences I/O, I set "playback" to my sound blaster card and "record" to my USB device. so now I can hear - both while recording and on playback.

But there is a 1 second delay between when I strike the keyboard key and when the sound comes out.

I found this topic of "delay" on the website here, but i haven't been able to use the advice to eliminate it.

So I think I might explore some other music authoring programs instead...

That delay is caused by "software playthrough" which you have selected in "Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O"
Because your recording and playback devices are physically independent, it requires the software to read the incoming data from the recording device and send it back out through the playback device, and this takes time.

Some other software may be able to reduce this delay to some extent, but I doubt that anything will be able to eliminate it.

Your best options are to either use a splitter or mixing desk between the keyboard and the USB input so that you can monitor the keyboard directly, or record through the Sound Blaster which will then allow you to turn off software playthrough and use the very much faster hardware playthrough that is available from your sound card.