Audacity Forum

The stable version worked on XP, but my computer's sound broke in transport. Installed the stable version on Vista laptop- recorded for 3 minutes, then it failed after I saved file. Tried to run in XP compatibility mode, no success. Uninstalled stable version, installed beta version. No success. Used microphone input as line input- it lightly recorded my voice, but did not record any music from cassette player. Tried to adjust volume- when clicked on volume, it just spiked up to 100 before I could lower the sound of the static. No option on Vista laptop to choose recording instead of playback, whereas there was this option on Windows XP. Had updated sound drivers from company's website, with computer tech support, as your wiki suggested. Your wiki implies that it is almost impossible to use Audacity with Vista. You suggest now that you have made some improvements in this past month with the beta version. My computer tech support thinks Audacity will not run on the Vista laptop. Have heard that Windows 7 is more like Windows XP. If Audacity won't run on Vista, how might it run on Windows 7?

At present Vista is probably a better option for Audacity than Windows 7.

Audacity does run on Vista, and is used by very many (millions?) of people on Vista. However there are a few Vista specific issues that you need to be aware of.
See here:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... ng_sources
and here:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... s_Vista_OS

tapester88 wrote:Your wiki implies that it is almost impossible to use Audacity with Vista.

Could you post a link to the specific part - it probably needs updating.

Thank you for writing back. In the wiki Windows Vista OS, the last section: Specific help recording computer playback or streaming audio, 2nd paragraph, sort of says that some low-end Vista systems may not work with Audacity. I have a popular laptop from a popular company, but it is 32-bit, Home Basic. Perhaps this is why Audacity doesn't seem to work on it. I have tech support from that company. Not everyone there is familiar with Audacity. But I have now had two tech agents who were familiar with Audacity and they took remote access control to check various settings and that is how I updated the sound drivers for example. These agents did not think Audacity would run on my laptop after we tried to adjust some settings. One thought that it would be better with Windows 7. As you write that it is now more compatible with Vista than 7, I don't know how to get it to work. I am not the most experienced computer user. Perhaps I am overlooking something in your link or in the general Vista OS wiki. I just know that it was much easier with a Windows XP desktop, which as I wrote is now broken. I think the speaker or sound options on the laptop in Audacity are Sigma Tel, Digital Output?, and Windows Sound Mapper. I've read that Sound Mapper is not a good choice. What is your opinion? Perhaps a more experienced computer user could get it to work on the Vista laptop. I don't know. But thank you for your time. If you have any other ideas or settings that I should look at, I will try to follow them in the next couple of weeks.

tapester88 wrote:In the wiki Windows Vista OS, the last section: Specific help recording computer playback or streaming audio, 2nd paragraph, sort of says that some low-end Vista systems may not work with Audacity.

Ah yes, found it.
As it says: "Specific help recording computer playback or streaming audio".
It is not implying that Audacity will not work with Vista, it is saying that some Vista computers do not support "Stereo Mix", (and I disagree that it is specifically "low-end" computers as I've seen this on some very high spec. computers as well).

It says:
1) There is no guarantee your sound device will have an option to record computer playback"
2) the inbuilt sound devices on many low-end Vista systems running Vista Home Basic often do not.

Perhaps it would be clearer if it said:
1) There is no guarantee your sound device will have an option to directly record sounds playing on your computer.
2) the inbuilt sound cards on some PCs running Vista sometimes do not provide this option.

The real issue here is that for recording sounds playing on your computer, the sound card drivers must support this option. If the option is not available, then there's nothing that Audacity can do about it and you will need to either upgrade your sound card, or use one of the workarounds (as described on that page).


As I said previously, Audacity should work on Vista Home Basic. (I have it running on Vista Home Basic, though I usually use Linux).
I agree that for running audio recording, Windows XP was much more friendly than Vista.

There's no point asking me if you should switch to Windows 7 as (and this is just my personal view) I'd rather not have anything to do with Microsoft (I love my Linux ), but let's assume that you are sticking with Windows (at least for now)....
Switching to Windows 7 will probably not cure the Audacity problems, so unless you have some other reasons to change from Vista to 7 you are probably better sticking with Vista for now.

I assume that you are still on Vista?
You have Audacity installed? Which version?
Does Audacity open?
Are you running it in XP compatibility mode?
How much RAM does your computer have?
What sort of processor?

Thanks again for your suggestions. I am writing this on the broken XP computer. The Dell Inspiron 1525 Vista laptop is at my mom's house. I was able to install the stable version and the beta version on the laptop and Audacity did open, but it did not record past 3 minutes. I think I tried to run it in XP compatibility mode and nothing happened. I uninstalled both versions. The laptop has 3 GB memory, 250 GB hard drive. The processor may be Intel Pentium- I'll check it the next time I'm there. You gave me something to explore with Linux- thanks. I have to check whether or not my sound device has the option to directly record sounds playing on the computer.
As described on the page about Vista OS, it mentions audacity.exe in Windows Explorer, and a .aup file, (to right click on them), but I couldn't find them.
To replace my broken XP computer, I probably will buy a Dell laptop since they have good tech support. I don't like Vista, so I probably will get Windows 7 (unless I try Linux, or use both).
It will be about a week or two before I can try your suggestions on the Vista laptop. Thanks again.

tapester88 wrote:I don't like Vista, so I probably will get Windows 7

I'm not overly keen on Vista either, but from what I hear Windows 7 is pretty similar to Vista.

If you want to try Linux, Ubuntu is a good one to start with - you can even run it directly from the CD without installing it. To do so, you need to boot directly from the CD (most computers have this as the default option, but if not you need to set the "Boot Order" in "BIOS"). Running from the CD is a bit slower than from a proper install, but it gives you the chance to have a look and a play without changing anything on your computer.