Stereo

[bjdealer]

While recording, the right hand bar (on toolbar) shows the recording level. If in stereo, shouldn't both bars be activated? How would I do that?

tks all, I use XP Home Edition with Audacity.

Bill


Trying to ask the question correctly is certainly a challenge to a non techie!

[steve]

Enable "2 channel stereo" recording in "Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O"

Note that if you are using a "Microphone input" on your computer, these are only mono. "Line inputs" can be stereo providing that they are supplied with a stereo signal.

[bjdealer]

Tks Steve, I found the edit/preferences, I selected 2 ch. but the meters on toolbar still shows one and now there are 2 lines showing the recording in major box when before there was only one. This is hard to describe I have found.

tks again

bill

[kozikowski]

A regular Audacity install should look sorta like this...

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_record.jpg

..but it depends on the size of your screen. Grab the lower right corner of the Audacity work window and push it around. The sound meters change size when you do that.

You can also float the meters above the work window and make them any size you want. View > Float Meter Toolbar.

OK, now that you can see what you're dealing with. Click once inside the red recording meters and they will come alive and show you what's at the input of your computer without you going into record.

Now. Where did you get stuck?

One more. You need to restart Audacity for some settings to stick.

Koz

[bjdealer]

Link to file: http://rcpt.yousendit.com/594898717/bc6420d9e34d6e 30eda7cc990fb4662d


I see it now I think. The 2 meters shown in my link: one is for incoming and other is outgoing, the meters are considerable smaller than the one you show though. Now the 2nd part, how do I listen to recording while recording to my PC?

tks again...

bill

[steve]

The 2 meters shown in my link: one is for incoming and other is outgoing,

That's right - the red meters on the right are the Record meters, and the meters on the left (which will be green when active) are the playback meters.
You can resize the meters by dragging them around with your mouse (click/hold and drag).

how do I listen to recording while recording to my PC?

What are you recording from?
If it's a regular sound card input you need to enable playback for the input that you are using in the Windows Mixer.
For example, if you have a regular PC microphone plugged in, then you need to open the Windows Mixer (loudspeaker icon near the clock) and in the Record settings you select the microphone input as the recording source, and to hear it through headphones you enable the microphone in the Playback settings.

If you are recording from a USB device, it may be different.

[bjdealer]

Think I figured it out. The output meter never moved convincing me that no sound was being produced for output. I went to Edit/preferences/Audio I/O and selected Software playthrough and now I can hear while recording. As far as you know, will that correction interfere with my recording?

tks again S.


bill

[steve]

"Software playthrough" is a "fallback" method for hardware configurations that do not support hardware playthrough.

An example of this would be if you are recording from one audio device (such as a USB turntable) and playing back on a different audio device (such as a sound card). In such cases, because they are two different audio devices, it is necessary for the software to send the audio data from one device to the other (software playthrough). The disadvantage of this is that there is a small delay between the sound being recorded and the sound playing back, and it requires additional processing power from your computer. In many cases these issues do not amount to any sort of "problem", but for multi-track recording the delay can be a big problem.

[bjdealer]

Interesting, I will have to do a test and see if it indeed causes a problem.......sigh!

tks again

bill