Multiple Voice Tracks

[kozikowski]

Oh, so you want to assign, for example, the third mic to track 1.

Can't you record what you have and then use the Move Track Up and Move Track Down commands in the left-hand drop-down menu?

Mind telling us which drivers you're using?

Koz

[J-Rod]

I'm in over my head. I have no idea what drivers I'm using. Whatever was on the install disk? I just need to record 3 different tracks with three different mics at one time. How do I do that?

[steve]

The way to do it IF it is supported by the Windows drivers for your sound card, is as follows (it's a big "IF" because many manufacturers only provide fully function ASIO drivers and only very basic support using Windows drivers, but Audacity does not ship with support for ASIO drivers because of licensing restrictions, so out of the box Audacity only supports Windows drivers).

Open Audacity and go to "Edit menu > Preferences > Devices" and set the number of channels to 3. The first three channels of your sound card should now record to three separate tracks when you press record.

More often than not that will not work, but sometimes it will work if you set the number of channels to the maximum number of channels that are supported by your sound card. The specification for the Fast Track Ultra is a bit vague on the number of channels (it says 8 channels, but there's only 6 analogue inputs), so try setting it to 6 or 8. If you end up having to record more channels than you need, you can delete any unused channels after recording. If you cannot record more than 2 channels, then unfortunately that may be a limitation of the drivers and the only way to overcome it is to either find better drivers, or use a recording program that supports ASIO (such as Cubase, Sonar, Reaper, ....)

Audacity can be made to support ASIO, but it is rather complicated to do and unless you already have a programming background you may be better to find an alternative program for doing the recording. Reaper is probably the most cost effective option as the demo version is unlimited, and it is inexpensive to buy. You can still use Audacity for editing after you have the recordings.