Audacity Forum

I have a problem with audacity, which I have not had in the past. Hopefully someone here can help out.

The situation is, I just added new speakers to my set-up, Alesis M1 320 USB speakers. They work fine, but I cannot get audacity to work now. When I hit record, I get the error message, "error while opening sound device. please check the input device setting and project sample rate."

Before using these new speakers, audacity worked fine. At that time, I had speakers run thru the 1/8in jack on the computer (a mac mini) The only thing I changed in audacity when adding new speakers was the preferences, audio, and changed the playback and output to USB CODEC. Prior to any of this, I already had the computer preferences changed to work with the usb speakers.

So, I have no idea what to do. What I'm trying to do is record DJ mix into audacity. I have a set-up w/ 2 turntables connected to a mixer. That mixer is run into both serato and the speakers. The speakers and then connected to the computer by usb.

anyone know what I'm talking about, lol?

thanks.

<<<anyone know what I'm talking about, lol?>>>

Yes, "lol" means Laughing Out Loud and is a texting abbreviation like YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) and IMHO (In My Humble Opinion).

You know when you installed your USB equipment, it arrived with its own set of Mac OS-X identities in...

Apple > System Preferences > Hardware > Sound > Input or Output

That's the first place that you express your desire. Probably the Output would be the USB device and the Input would be Built-In Audio or Line-In. Some Macs have Microphone-In in this panel. The second place for settings is in Audacity itself...

Audacity > Preferences > Audio I/O

Playback may have your USB device available. Select it. Record should be Built-In Audio, Two Channel (Stereo). Quality should be 44100, 16-bit, Stereo. OK the panel and it's best to restart Audacity to make sure your settings "stick."

Let us know how that goes.

Koz

thank you koz for helping.

so, i changed the system preferences on my computer. Output is now USB, and input is built in input.
On audacity, I changed the preferences to audio i/o to USB for playback. 2 channel stereo, and built in input setting for record. the quality is at 44100, and also set at 16bit.

After doing those changes, audacity will now record. However, I still have a problem. Audacity is not picking up anything when I'm playing serato record, or a regualar record. The speakers are working, there's sound, but it's not showing up on audacity. I used to click on the upper right hand corner meter, and it would show a reading of how strong the signal is coming into audacity. I have both sliders all the way up and the record blasting, and nothing.

So, one issue resolved, and now another.

Any ideas?

Thank You for your time!

I'm now wondering if the USB speaker and the USB connection from Serato is the problem. When I play a regular record on the turntable, it is going thru Serato, but I now can record and everything works with Audacity. However, when I switch from record (phono) to Serato control record (line) and run Serato and play music, I get the error. So, is there a way to get Audacity to pick up the signal from the speakers while running Serato?

<<<So, is there a way to get Audacity to pick up the signal from the speakers while running Serato?>>>

Not on a Mac, no. But you can make a recording in Audacity and fool the Mac into playing the Audacity sound to the speakers. That's where those playthrough settings come in handy. Audacity > Preferences > Audio I/O > Settings at the bottom.

And yes, we frequently have to tell people about the monitoring function you get by clicking inside the record meters, but we don't have to do that with you. So back to the top where you play to the USB speakers and record from the Line-In. Try Software Playthrough first.

Some of these system changes may require you to restart Audacity.

Koz