CANNOT HEAR MULTI TRACKS WHILE RECORDING!!

[BMA0012]

PLEASE help. i just downloaded 1.3, and tried to multitrack, and i cant hear my recording while trying to put down another track. i went into preferences and clicked the overdub box or whatever, and if im lucky it may play back once, but then it wont do it again. mostly it never does it. i have a lenovo think pad sl500 with windows xp, and im using the internal mic at the moment as i have no other option. is there a plugin that would fix this problem? im sure this has been answered plenty of times before, but any help would be greatly appreciated. btw i am definately computer illiterate, so please work with me. i also tried the older version, 1.2, with the same problem.

[BMA0012]

someone please help me. i cant be the only person who has had this problem. maybe im an idiot, but everywhere ive checked doesnt address this issue. is my computer just not cool enough to run this program properly?

[kozikowski]

<<<i cant be the only person who has had this problem. >>>

No, but you're the only person that's had that problem on your computer. One of the problems with writing a wiki or instructions for a simple multi-track is it's very, very different depending on your computer, operating system, and circumstances. The wiki would go forever.

We've tried.

Did you click Play Tracks while Recording new ones? Restart Audcity when you make system changes like that. Did the click stay clicked when you restarted?

Are you on headphones? You need to be on headphones any time you do live recording. Windows machines also have a cute feature where they try to do echo cancellation. That's cool in video or audio conferencing, but it's deadly when you're trying to record a live performance.

Go into the Windows Control Panels...

Windows Control Panel
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... trol_Panel

..and look for Advanced or Extra settings. Turn off anything that has "Echo" or "Sound Management" in the title.

Koz

[BMA0012]

thanks for the reply. so i clicked the box for recording and playing audio, closed the program, and re-opened it, and it is still checked. i am also using headphones, maybe they have to be plugged in before i run audacity? i also tried to find those settings under control panel, but only found an icon for "sound and audio devices" with no options resembling echo or sound management. any other ideas?

thanks a million for the help.

brandon

[kozikowski]

I'm going as far as I can. I'm a Mac elf and we have a whole bunch of different problems with multi-track.

I know you need to "produce" your lead track before you use it. Sometimes, people record a click track with just the most basic chords in it to guide the performance. It's not intended to be part of the final show.

For example, you want a lead-in. Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Music. This is normally performed by the drummer using rim shots before the show, but you can do it with the click track built into Audacity.

Generate > Click Track.

If you're playing along with an already established music selection, that can cause a whole host of other problems. The new track and the older track need to be the same technical specifications, or you could have problems with the machine keeping up and rhythm sync.

So your singing along with Van Morrison is more complicated than you thought.

Koz

[BMA0012]

ha yeah im trying to record original music, but it wont even let me play along to a click track so i know where the beat is. this is so frustrating. any other ideas before i uninstall and find something else? i would hate to do that, everyone says this program is the best deal out there, but if i cant record then its just taking up space on my computer.

brandon

[kozikowski]

We can go down the basics.

Can you play any other music? YouTube? Music CDs? DVDs? Does your machine make Windows noises when it starts and shuts down?

Can you play plain sound files on Audacity...

http://www.kozco.com/tech/piano2.wav

Pull down my six second piano recital and see if it plays.

Can you make plain, uncomplicated recordings without listening? Do they play back to your headphones later? We tend to wed ourselves to a complex problem and forget to check the obvious. Multi-track is just a clever combination of ordinary existing tools.

Koz