Audacity 1.2.6 won't record

[RichardC]

checked posts for last five pages. no answers. Mac dual PowerPC G5, first Generation, OS X 10.5. Just bought GenSound's PL-USB Audio Interface Pre-Amp. My Mac reads the enclosed Audacity CD as blank, so, downloaded 1.2.6 from website. Software will open (but, curiously, will not show version info). It will not record from the GemSound device. I followed all of the steps outlined on Audacity/Wiki. Still no go. I used Griffin's iMic with Final Vinyl before this. Worked most of the time until recently. Gave up the ghost so tried Audacity. Not working right out of the box. This isn't rocket science, just transferring a couple of hundred LPs to my computer. How difficult can that be? Apparently, very.

[kozikowski]

No, it's not rocket surgery, but you do have to follow the steps. Plug the device in and...

Apple > System Preferences > Hardware > Sound > Input

See if the device is listed there, select it, and see if the little sound meter flashes when you make sound. If it doesn't that's the end of the story. Audacity gets it's signals from the Mac.

If that works, launch Audacity and see if you can find the device in Preferences. It might also work with "Default Device" selected.

Click once inside the red record meters and see if they jump when you make sound. There are a lot of branches with this, so see how far you get.

Your graphics may be different...

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

Koz

[RichardC]

Thanks for the response. You said what none of the posted material covered, about the meter reading the input sound on the Mac. Sure enough, there's no signal coming in. Must be a hardware problem with the GemSound unit. I'll give them a call.

Nice screenshot.

Thanks again.

[kozikowski]

There are two places on the Mac to do this, the other being Go > Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup. That's a lot more comprehensive and thorough, but I've never seen a meter in that panel.

Koz

[RichardC]

I reconnected the GemSound device directly, and no longer through a hub, and got sound input to register in the Audio panel under preferences. I confirmed all the settings to mimic those posted in Audacity's help section (though, there is a loop in the link to OS X problems that returns you to the top of the page instead of other topics, so, there's no more help to be found there). The turntable is spinning. I can hear sound coming from the needle, but, nothing is showing up in the meters in Audacity. Hitting record only results in a flat line, unlike that nice spiky set of sine waves captured in your lovely screenshot. Harumph!

[kozikowski]

Now you dig around in Audacity Preferences and either set the same thing as in Apple preferences, or sometimes it works to just select Default Device.

While we're in Preferences, set 44100, 16-bit (not 32) and Stereo (not Mono). Restart Audacity.

When you start Audacity cold, you can click once inside the red record meters and they should wake up and meter the incoming sound without actually going into Record.

Koz

[RichardC]

did all that. still no go.


why did i buy this hardware/software again?


when someone asks me what software I recommend for doing this....

[kozikowski]

<<<when someone asks me what software I recommend for doing this....>>>

Is that rhetorical?

Was there a setting for GemSound in Audacity Preferences? Were you able to reset the sound settings to 44100, 16-bit, Stereo? Sometimes you need to restart Audacity to make the settings stick.

Koz

[RichardC]

restarted Audacity. everything seems to be working.

thanks much for the help.

have a nice day!


Oh. well. it seemed to be working. waves showing on the record bars. but playback? seems Audacity cannot find about 100 temp files. Sorry we lost your session. pleas try again later....

[kozikowski]

Did it do that before or after you tried to Save a Project? Don't do that. Always Export As WAV to get a good stable sound file. If the recording crashed, then we got other problems.

How much room do you have on your hard drive and how big is it? Go > Computer > Control Click on the hard drive > Get INFO. If the hard drive is over 90% full, then most production software packages are going to act funny.

Koz