Audacity Forum

Hello dear Audacity users and developers

Executive Summary: Could anyone share a recompiled Audacity version with ASIO driver support with us by mail or PM or filesharing-server? And explain to us users how to install it on our windows systems and how to enable the use of the ASIO drivers and their 24bit recording ability?

THANKS!!!

The long version:

As Stevethefiddle has confirmed on 2011-02-19: "It seems to me that (despite what people may say on the forums), the current Portaudio v19 version in CVS does NEVER record in more the 16-bit on Windows." http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/mess ... d=27086930

And Audacity does recording through Portaudio. So what you will get, when switching to 24 bit, is a 16 bit recording filled up with dummy bytes. No more information in there than in a 16 bit recording. That's a pitty...

There are two alternatives: To use another software for recording (other freely available software: Traverso DAW, Ardour, Power Sound Editor, Mp3DirectCut, Wavosaur, Rosegarden, Frinika - however, no idea if they suffer the same flaw, which is not excluded - as not even with the well documented Audacity you are aware of it if you are just a normal user!).

After recording you can do real 24bit (better native 32bit f.p.) editing in Audacity.

However, it would be much NICER to directly record to Audacity!

So there IS an alternative: To have Audacity use drivers called ASIO that seem to be supported by good sound cards and are even known to be the best option for its low latency.

"Audacity Beta can be compiled with ASIO support for private, non-distributable use"

However, one has to compile it at home. Here is the "how to"
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... _Interface
and here unofficial with more details:
http://www.dj-gugge.se/ASIO-till-Audacity.html

However... being a non IT Person or with other words just an advanced user, but no developer, I am unable to understand all this without spending a couple of days reading and trying out...

Certainly, this is no problem for many of the readers of this forum... and certainly, many have already done it. COULD YOU PLEASE SHARE IT?

On file sharing servers it may be posted anonymously, and via PM or e-Mail it would even be legal, as this is not a "distribution".

I would be very happy if somebody would share his compilation with us other Windows users! At best, with some words on how to install it and how to make sure, Audacity really makes use of the ASIO drivers and their 24bit recording capability.

THANKS A MILLION FOR ALL YOUR HELP!

Urs

There is another alternative, which is to install an operating system that does not have this limitation.
I realise that you probably don't want to abandon Windows, but it is pretty easy to set up a "dual boot" system so that on boot-up you have a choice of booting into Windows or into a different operating system.

If you are interested in exploring this option I can probably help you as I've done this quite a few times.
The initial step would be to try out a "Live CD" version of Linux (runs Linux directly from the CD without writing anything to the hard drive).
(I can't help you with ASIO as I don't use it).

Thanks, Steve!

Well I had dual boot several times for different reasons (win95 and NT at the time, but not using the windows dual boot system but another one at the bootsector lever, which worked quite ok). However, for now, Linux would run just for Audacity. And when Audacity runs on Linux, I would not be able to use all the stuff I have with win. So I prefer the ASIO solution. Even more so, as the Audacity team lets us know, that ASIO is also the best way for recording with regards to recording quality and latency. So why not using it. But the Linux boot CD option is quite nice, as I would not have to fuss around with my win system disk.

However, given that Audacity is quite a popular software and 24bit soundcards got to be the standard equipment, I just could not believe, that there is no pre-compiled ASIO version available around, and I found one. Its just a question of searching the net, and I got to a pretty unofficial looking link and page, but having my virus scanner up to date, I gave it a try and it worked. I won't put the link here, as this is the official forum and should not lead directly to a download of an unofficial version.

However, thanks to those who take care of sharing this more versatile version with us!

Cheers! Urs