Setting preferences

[sheryl8679]

I am new to Audacity and am trying to follow the instructions for importing audio. I'm told to set the preferences prior to import, including setting the playback device, both output and input to DIGI960Out(1). Sometimes when I open Audacity, I get only two options - MS Sound Mapper and SoundMAX Digital Audio - both of which I've tried. Sometimes I get a fairly large number of options, none of which is DIGI960Out(1). When I go to import my WAV file, the import seems to work; that is, it takes a few minutes to import. But when it's done, there is nothing in any of the tracks. I thought the problem might be my Vista 64 machine, so I switched to my XP, but get the same results and assume it's because I cannot set the preference correctly. I'm not sure what to do... Thanks

[steve]

What instructions are you using? Are they instructions that came with your sound card? (they don't sound like any of the official Audacity documentation)

[themagickind]

I'm having a similar problem. I have saved an imported file on Audacity and want to record something else with it. But it doesn't let me. I'm so new to this thing. I'm very confused. Now I've completely deleted everything hoping to start from scratch but all that pops up is an error, I need to check my impute device setting and project rate. I don't know what that is. Can someone help?

[steve]

Let's start from scratch with this.

Do you have the latest Audacity 1.3.9 version?
What operating system do you have?
What sort of sound card?
What are you wanting to record?
Anything else that may be relevant?

[themagickind]

Okay, i do have the latest version.
I have window's vista.
I don't have a sound card. I don't think.
I'm trying to record myself with audio in the background.
Everything was working fine until I was tweaking with my audio and I decided to import a song from my files. A karaoke version of the song. Ever since I did that I could not record anything anymore. that error message is still popping up saying that i should check my impute device settings and project sample rate. Now I tried messing around with the sample rate after finally realizing what that was, but I don't know where and what the impute device settings are. Please help~

[steve]

Everything was working fine until I was tweaking with my audio and I decided to import a song from my files. A karaoke version of the song. Ever since I did that I could not record anything anymore.

Importing the karaoke song is most likely incidental. "Tweaking with my audio" may be relevant, or perhaps not, so I'm not going to assume.

I don't know where and what the impute device settings are.

Input settings are really in 2 places - there are input settings in Audacity Preferences and there are input settings in your computer itself. The latest version of Audacity will usually configure its input settings automatically, but so that we know where we are starting from we will let Audacity reset those, then we will look at the computer settings.

I don't have a sound card. I don't think.

Your computer must have a "sound card" of some type, so I assume you mean that it has "on-board" sound. That is, the microphone socket on your computer goes directly to the motherboard rather than to a separate sound card.
Is this a laptop computer?
I presume that you are using a computer microphone that is plugged into the microphone socket of your computer?
(this last point important - 1 that you are using the correct socket, and 2 that we are not talking about a USB microphone or a built in microphone).

To reset preferences in Audacity, see the instructions here - this may be all that you need. If that fixes it, great, let us know. If not, do not change anything in preferences just yet - tell us more about your equipment first.
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... tored.3F_2

[themagickind]

Okay I tried to do what that link said and didn't fix anything so it has to be something with my computer itself. I do have laptop computer.

I do have the 1.2 version. Just figured it out sorry.

So what next?

[steve]

I tried to do what that link said

OK, since you have Audacity 1.2.6, did you use the "safe solution" for resetting Audacity preferences as described in that link?
Do you still have the .reg file?

[themagickind]

ok i still have the program installed. I did what was told on the link and i did use the safe solution but still having the same problem. I think maybe the problem is on my computer instead of the program not sure.

[steve]

OK, good.
I'm going to suggest using the 1.3.9 version (don't worry about the 'beta' status - on most machines it's actually more stable than the 'stable' version).
If you're lucky it'll just work - if not, we may need to do a little bit of tweaking, but at least we now know where we are starting from.