Audacity Forum

I recently bought a Vox Amplug to record some guitar stuff onto Audacity for messing around with and making some songs, however when I am trying to record, it is allowing me to record my first audio track line, then nothing else underneath.....
What I am trying to do is record the rhythm guitar first, then record the lead after on a seperate audio track.

However when I go to do it the first track works fine and the second time I record I get the message "Error while opening sound device, check sample rate etc".

I have searched the forum and seen a couple of posts saying disable playback whilst you try to record because sometimes you get errors, however I am still getting the same thing, even a new audacity document wont record as long as theres another one open with some recording in it.

The Amplug is plugged directly into the microphone socket from the headphones socket on the Amplug. I have tested the recording with Windows and it never loses the sound or anything, I have tested it with both microphone playback through speakers enabled and disabled so I can actually hear what I am playing but no difference. I am not running a splitter for the sound to go through to headphones either.

Any ideas?

Go to:
"Edit menu > Preferences > Devices"
Ensure that the "Playback" device is set correctly. If you are listening through your computer sound card, then it needs to be set here.

Hi,

Yeah thats already set to Realtek high def microphone. I changed it from the original Microsoft option to see if it worked I forgot to mention sorry.

BlackAssassinUK wrote:thats already set to Realtek high def microphone.

"Playback" ???

sorry i misread, thats set to usb speakers.

So you can record a track with Audacity, and you can play a track with Audacity, but if you try to record a second track, then you get the "Error while opening sound device, check sample rate etc" message? Is that correct?

Do you have "Software Playthrough" enabled (near the bottom of the Transport menu)?
If you do, try disabling it.

Yeah its like the first time i press record, it all goes fine. Then i press the second time i get the error, then occasionally it will let me record a second line, but it wont let me re-record a 2nd line or do a 3rd line ever.
Software playback isnt enabled, neither is any playback feature on my computer through control panel. The playback does work even when it wont record though, so its not a case of the cable being faulty or anything.

What sort of computer are you using?
What settings do you have in "Edit menu > Preferences > Quality"?

Its an acer aspire one laptop. Not the best i know.....

Quality is 48000 Hz i tried lowering it to 22050 Hz but it wouldnt even record once with that setting so i set it back to 48000 hz

Everything else is default. Which is:

Default sample rate: 32 bit float
Real time sample rate converter: fast sinc interpolation
Real time dither: None
High Quality Dither: triangle

Set the default sample rate to 44100 Hz.
Disconnect from the Internet.
Shut down all non-essential programs and applications, including any anti-virus and firewall programs (remember to restart them after this test).
Check in the Task Manager to see if there are any programs running in the background that do not need to be.

Then try recording a short test track, then a second track. Any joy?

By the way, what operating system are you using?