Audacity Forum

The sound on my Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop suddenly disappeared yesterday afternoon when I started to try to record with Audacity. I spent three-and-a-quarter hours on the phone with Dell tech support, including with support not covered under my warranty. They finally reloaded the audio driver and some updates and made it work again.
I wasn't sure what had caused the problem. But today, I tried to use Audacity again, and once again the audio for my entire computer disappeared.
I installed and began using Audacity for the first time last Sunday (four days ago), and was not having this problem before yesterday.
Does anyone know what the problem is?
I have Windows Vista Home Premium, and the Audacity program I've installed is 1.2.6
Thanks very much for any help.

And what are you trying to do with Audacity - I'm guessing that you're trying to record from a USB turntable?

WC

I'm trying to record from a USB cassette tape deck. Should be the same principle as a USB turntable. When I get to Audacity, I click on "monitor input," so that I can hear the tape through my computer speakers while I'm recording. Sometimes I put Audacity on pause with the record button clicked, so that I can monitor the tape, find locations on it, etc.
Thanks for responding.

In which case ....

When you plug in a USB device like this your computer hands over control of all sound services to the USB device - both input and output. Since you USB TT doesn't have a set of speakers, you then don't get any sound from the computer (not even the normal Windows sounds).

All you need to do is to get Windows and Audacity to retarget the sound output onto your PC's on-board soundcard. In Windows use Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Audio > Sound Playback - in Audacity use Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O > Playback Device - you may need to close and restart Audacity for the change to take effect.

Many folks fall into this bear-trap when they start out with USB/Audacity - I certainly did !

WC