recording multi channel m-audio fast track ultra

[actemedia]

Hello, I'm trying to record multiple channels with the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra. On wall power (which I am using), the FTU should record up to 4 mic inputs. I am using Audacity 1.2.6 for Windows, and when I choose anything over stereo, I get the "Error, please check input device settings and project sample rate." From what I've read, this means my sound device is only sending 2 channels but it should be sending all 4. Or am I missing something else? I would appreciate any advice or thoughts on this!

Details of my system are below:
Dell Dimension 3100
Windows XP Service Pack 2
P4 3.06 GHz / 1GB RAM
Fast Track Ultra (driver FTU_V32_5.10.00.5092v3)

[steve]

It all depends on the device drivers.
Audacity does not support ASIO drivers, it uses the standard Windows drivers, and it only supports a single instance of any any recording device. Some (naughty) sound cards achieve multiple channels by using multiple instances of 2 channel drivers rather than a single multi-channel driver. Audacity can support a single multi-channel Windows (not ASIO) driver, or a single 2 channel (stereo) driver, but unfortunately it does not support multiple stereo devices. (although this is a highly requested feature and may appear in later versions of Audacity).

The way to tell if you have a multi-channel driver available for Audacity is to use Audacity 1.3.5 and look in "Help > Audio Device Info". This will produce a list of all supported input and output devices and their supported sample rates. Look down the list and see if there is a listed device that has 4 input channels available. If there is, then select that device in "Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O". If there isn't then you are out of luck.

Even if you are out of luck with Audacity, if your audio device works with ASIO drivers, then you may be able to use it with Wavosaur (that program is free, but not open source, and can therefore include ASIO - ASIO support can be added to Audacity, but you would need to build Audacity from the source code http://www.audacityteam.org/wiki/index. ... _Interface )

[actemedia]

Thanks, stevethefiddle. I am pretty sure this was the problem because I only saw the 2 channels in Audacity beta's info on devices. I tried wavosaur and that did not work, so I returned the FTU and I'm going to use my very nice portable recorder (a Sony PCM-D50) for capturing round table type conversations.

[allancady]

For the benefit of other adventurers who may run into this issue, I stumbled across a solution.

Running Audacity release version 1.2.6, open Preferences, Audio I/O. For recording device, select Fast Track Ultra In. Now, here's the trick: for Channels, select 8. Not 4, not 6... 8. Then, when you record, you will get all 8 input channels from the FTU. Works for me.

Audacity folks, can you tell me which driver is being used when I do this? And can you explain why it throws the nasty message if you select fewer than 8 channels?

-Allan

[Gale Andrews]

For the benefit of other adventurers who may run into this issue, I stumbled across a solution....Now, here's the trick: for Channels, select 8. Not 4, not 6... 8. Then, when you record, you will get all 8 input channels from the FTU. Audacity folks, can you tell me which driver is being used when I do this? And can you explain why it throws the nasty message if you select fewer than 8 channels?

It will be the Windows MME drivers supplied by m-audio (Audacity as distributed does not support ASIO drivers). Audacity's multi-channel recording ability is still limited - you cannot choose the exact channels you want to record, nor can you allocate specific channels to specific tracks.

Gale