Audacity Forum

Like many others, I discovered that "stereo mix" has been disabled in hardware on newer computers. I have concocted a good workaround by purchasing an inexpensive software product called "virtual audio cable." Setting audio output to "virtual audio cable" then setting input in Audacity's "preferences" tab to "virtual audio cable" produces excellent results.

One remaining problem. In the "stable" version of Audacity, checking the box labeled "software playthrough" allows me to hear the sound as it is recorded. I can't achieve that functionality in the (generally superior) Beta version. Is this a bug? Or am I missing something else I need to set?

Please advise.

If it can be done on version 1.2.x, you should be able to do it in 1.3.x
I've heard of virtual audio cable (even used it briefly many years ago), but I'm not sufficiently familiar with it to know how it needs to be set up. You may not actually need to use software playthrough, it may be possible to hear what is being recorded by configuring vac. The configuration options that you need to be looking at in Audacity are in "Preferences" (from the Edit menu) in the "Devices" and "Recording" sections.

Thanks, Steve, but I don't know what you mean by "configuring vac." Please advise.
winnjama

winnjama wrote:Thanks, Steve, but I don't know what you mean by "configuring vac." Please advise.
winnjama

I meant "configuring Virtual Audio Cable".
I'm going back a long way and many of those old memory cells have suffered from years of rock'n'roll living, but from what I remember you could set virtual audio cable to combine or distribute signals between applications. So it should be possible to configure it so that sound from one application (for example your web browser) can be connected to Audacity and to your sound system, so there is no need to enable software playthrough.