Can't hear while recording

[Bender]

Hi Everyone,

Firstly, thanks in advance to anyone who is able to help me with this problem. Secondly, I have spent days researching and trying to solve this problem before coming here and asking for help, and have tried everything I can think of....but sorry if this is a common problem that I'm asking!

Here's the story:

I just got a new laptop with Vista on it. Til now, I've been using a desktop PC with XP, and using audacity with no problems. I use a guitar for recording.....my guitar plugs in to a POD XT Live, and then I run a cable from it to the microphone input of the computer. Audacity always worked perfectly like this, and I got pretty good quality results from it.....I was happy with it anyway.

However, since I installed Audacity on my new laptop, I'm having problems; I can't hear what I'm playing. If I record something and then play it back I can hear it....but I can't hear what I'm playing through the speakers as I'm playing it. I'm using the same chain as before: eg guitar>POD XT Live>micrphone jack on laptop.....and its working as far as the recording side of it goes, but I just can't hear anything I play on guitar through the speakers (or even if I use the headphone jack and plug some headphones in).

The speakers work fine normally.....both the onboard speakers of the laptop, and some other ones I use for a bigger sound.....they both play CD's and system sounds perfectly.....just not anything I play on guitar as I'm recording it. (though they do play what I've recorded after I've recorded it, if that makes sense!). EDIT: I can't hear what I'm playing at any time....not just with Audacity BTW. If I just plug the guitar into the mic jack and play....nothing comes out at all, whether or not audacity is open. But I know a signal is going in.....because i can record what I'm playing in audacity. It seems that the computers hardware is unable to play the signal as it goes into the computer....but thats weird because this new computer is better than my old one. The only difference is that it has Realktek on it.

I've gone through every conceivable option on the edit>preferences>Audio I/O menu, and nothing works.

(Using software playthough works, but the lag is too extreme to be considered useable)

I've checked all the sound properties menu's.....can't see anything there that might be wrong....and in any case, it is recording OK, I just can't hear what I'm playing!

My laptop came with Realtek High Definition Audio installed....and i've checked its control panel and once again I can't see anything that might be amiss.

Basically, I can't understand for the life of me why I can't hear what I'm playing. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers.

[kozikowski]

Do you have telephone over IP/VOIP/Vonage? Some kind of make phone calls with your computer software? Video Conferencing? Microsoft NetMeeting?

All of those services grab the computer sound services by the pistachios and sometimes don't let go, leaving you with scrambled sound pathways.

Just to cover it, have you been through the wiki page on Windows Sound Panels? I know there are several cases where Microsoft "obsoleted" some of the services and you have to bring them back.

Windows Control Panel
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... trol_Panel

What happened when you tried Hardware Playthrough? There are two different tools so you can pick the one that works best.

Koz

[kozikowski]

By the way, most of these tools aren't so you can listen to you, they're so you can listen to the rhythm track while you record a new performance.

Koz

[Bender]

Do you have telephone over IP/VOIP/Vonage? Some kind of make phone calls with your computer software? Video Conferencing? Microsoft NetMeeting? Nope!

All of those services grab the computer sound services by the pistachios and sometimes don't let go, leaving you with scrambled sound pathways.

Just to cover it, have you been through the wiki page on Windows Sound Panels? I know there are several cases where Microsoft "obsoleted" some of the services and you have to bring them back.

Windows Control Panel
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... trol_Panel Will give this a go and report back!

What happened when you tried Hardware Playthrough? There are two different tools so you can pick the one that works best. My audacity only has a check box for software playthrough....can't see anything about hardware playthough. Software playthrough works, but the lag makes it unusable for tracking.
Koz

Ta for the advice.

[Bender]

By the way, most of these tools aren't so you can listen to you, they're so you can listen to the rhythm track while you record a new performance.

Koz

Hey Koz,

Not sure if I'm understanding what you mean here.....if i'm tracking an electric guitar direct to computer via a pre-amp and FX processor, you need to be able to hear what you're playing so you you can keep in time, hear that you're playing the right notes etc.......I need to be able to hear what Im playing as I play it and also the rhythm tracks at the same time.

[Bender]

Koz,

Just checked that wiki page.....yep, I've done that, and everything is showing as it should. The problem remains.

[kozikowski]

I'm out. We need to wait for the heavy Windows Users.

Koz

[Bender]

I'm out. We need to wait for the heavy Windows Users.

Koz

Will do. Thanks for your help though.

[steve]

From an "ease of use" point of view you have the worst of two worlds.
Vista does not make it easy to set up your sound card for recording.
"Realtek High Definition Audio" uses a custom (non-standard) interface.

On an XP machine with a "standard" sound card, you would go into the Windows Mixer and adjust the output level (playback part of the mixer) for the microphone (or whichever input you are using). On Vista with the Realtek, you may be able to do the same through the Realtek interface. You may be able to open the Windows Mixer for the Realtek device (even though its default interface is the custom Realtek one).

Sorry I can't help more - I don't have Vista or a Realtek sound card - but it is the sound card settings that you need to look at rather than Audacity settings.

Unless you are using a laptop computer, you should probably be using the "Line in" socket rather than the "Mic in". (On laptops you do not generally have the choice as they usually only have one input socket).

[waxcylinder]

Just to add my two-penn'orth- my second machine is a laptop with a Realtek HD sound card (and the Realtek custom interface that Steve writes about). I don't run Vista on this machine - I insisted that Dell "downgrade" the O/S to XP-PRO as a condition of purchase.

The Realtek card and Audacity run absolutely fine on this environment - it did take a bit of fiddling with the custom interface to get it set up right, but I even managed to get it recording streamed audio from t'interweb (which lots of computer/soundcard setups seem to struggle with - particularly MACs).

So I would suggest a bit of exp[erimentation with the custom interface - I'm on my desktop PC at the moment without access to the laptop. If you want me to post what config I have set on my Realtek interface I can do that - just post the request here and I should be able to do that over the weekend.

WC