Audacity for Mac less powerful than Audacity for Windows?

[lowden023]

I bought my first Mac two months ago and installed Audacity 1.3.7 the other day. Today I tried for the first time to record online from the internet and found out that this is not really easy. Trying to solve my problem I dropped onto this forum and found out, that many people seem to have the same problem. And when I read that it's also hard to export mp3-Files I was rather astonished: I've been recording from Internet and exporting mp3-Files with Audacity on my Dell for two years, and both is so easy that any child could do it. That it's so complicated on a Mac is rather disappointing to me because I actually bought my MacBook because I wanted to have a system that helps me doing my musical projects.
Is the Mac system so different from a PC that it's just not possible for Audacity to provide the same features for Mac users or is the software on this platform so new that they are just not up to date with fixing bugs? I cannot believe that all this is only possible if I install other software or more plugins. Does anybody know? Thanks, Martin

[allencmcbride]

Windows users, like Mac users, normally have to install LAME themselves in order to encode MP3: http://audacityteam.org/help/faq?s=inst ... m=lame-mp3. It's a legal issue, not a technical one. I don't know how you would have gotten around that with your Dell.

The difficulty of recording from the internet apparently depends on the setup of one's drivers, not on Audacity. It's always an issue on Mac, and often an issue on Windows machines as well (http://www.audacityteam.org/forum/viewt ... =36&t=4826). Have you tried Soundflower? It's not mentioned in alatham's FAQ, probably because it Just Works for some people, but is a huge pain for others. If you do a forum search for "soundflower", you'll see the range of experiences people have had with it, as well as some of the alternatives.

--Allen

[kozikowski]

It has nothing to do with drivers. Macs were designed without the dangerous recursive sound pathway that gets so many Windows users into trouble. If you flip back through the Windows postings, they're all about getting their unstable Windows machine to work, rarely how to run Audacity.

"How come I get echoes and feedback whenever I try to record my live microphone?"

A problem completely unknown on Macs.

There is a program called "SoundFlower" that you can download from the Apple web site. It makes Macs temporarily as unstable as Windows machines are all the time. It's difficult to use and it's one positive attribute is that it's free.

I didn't think much of it.

I use WireTap Pro which lets me record anything the Mac sound services is doing. It's stable, easy to use, and it produces many different export file formats at my choosing. The latest web site offering is WireTap Studio which is overkill for most people. You can get the older Pro from here.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/25421

<<<is so easy that any child could do it.>>>

That hasn't been our experience. See: pages and pages of Windows people trying to dig themselves out of trouble. You should drop by and help some of these people. It's a volunteer forum.

All the Audacity versions on all three computer platforms need the "lame" software add-on to export MP3 files.

Koz

[steve]

Windows users, like Mac users, normally have to install LAME themselves in order to encode MP3: http://audacityteam.org/help/faq?s=inst ... m=lame-mp3. It's a legal issue, not a technical one. I don't know how you would have gotten around that with your Dell.

If Audacity 1.2 was being used AND Lame was already installed, Audacity would probably have located Lame automatically.
Audacity 1.3.7 requires a specific version of Lame which should be downloaded from the link on the main Audacity website.

Macs were designed without the dangerous recursive sound pathway that gets so many Windows users into trouble. If you flip back through the Windows postings, they're all about getting their unstable Windows machine to work, rarely how to run Audacity.

Macs and PCs have different design criteria. Macs comprise of Mac hardware, with a Mac operating system, whereas PCs are just computers (hardware) on which you can run your choice of operating system. Macs (and increasingly Microsoft Windows) deliberately impose limitations on what the hardware is allowed to do. The inability to record "stereo mix" on a Mac is a deliberate limitation that requires additional (non-free) software to circumvent. Many Mac enthusiasts consider this to be positive thing. PC's do not have this limitation, though some operating systems (Vista) may make it deliberately difficult for the user to access this particular functionality.

[kozikowski]

<<<requires additional (non-free) software to circumvent.>>>

Save SoundFlower which is a free download (last I looked).

Koz

[allencmcbride]

<<<requires additional (non-free) software to circumvent.>>>

Save SoundFlower which is a free download (last I looked).

And, in principle, JACK, which is GPL. (But I haven't tried it, and some quick Googling suggests there have been issues between JACK and Audacity). --Allen

P.S. I wish I could search the forum for JACK issues, but there doesn't seem to be a case-sensitive option, and searching for "jack" on a forum like this isn't quite specific enough.

[kozikowski]

Yes, it seems the search engines don't know JACK.

There is a particularly unfortunately named company that makes very high quality audio electronic components. It's called THAT. I know one person in a row that's ever been able to find the company through Google.

Koz

[lowden023]

Thanks everybody for your answers.
To Koz: Thanks for the link to WireTap Pro. Unfortunately they don't seem to provide it for OS X 10.5.6, which I've got on my MacBook ... Klicking on "download" just brings the message "Sorry, we are unable to find a download for the Mac OS X version of" on my screen. I'm going to try again later. In the meantime I might get a try on "SoundFlower".
...
Found another link where I could download WireTrap Pro 1.3.4. Seems to work on my system! I haven't registered yet, though. I also got myself LAME which means that I should be able to go ahead using Audacity in almost the same way as before on my Dell.
...
Hmm, would have been nice ... Now what seems to turn out as a problem is that WireTap Pro normally writes AIFC-Files, which on the other hand Audacity can not deal with. When I place the file (which I can listen to without any problems in iTunes) in Audacity it keeps looping the first 2 or 3 seconds. So I tried with saving as mp3. This works for Audacity, but it's only possible to save a mp3-file with a registered WireTap Pro ... and it's no longer possible to register. On the page they say the "pro-version" is neither supported nor sold anymore. And before I pay 50 bucks more for WireTap Studio I'll try to find other ways. Or has anybody got other ideas?

[kozikowski]

All Mac audio files are AIFC. AIFF-Compressed. That's how they got around the Big Endian/Little Endian thing (they're not really compressed). Audacity is supposed to recognize and work with them...at least mine does.

I'll need to open this up again when I get back home.

Bring me up. You have Leopard/1.3.7/Intel? I'm doing all this under Tiger/1.3.6/Intel. If this is a problem, it will be the second software package I use every day that won't run under Leopard.

There's always SoundFlower. That does work. It's just awkward to use.

Koz

[lowden023]

As you know I'm new to Mac. I know I've got Leopard on my MacBook, but I don't know which version. Can I find this information anywhere on my computer?Mac OS is X 10.5.6 and it's an Intel processor.