Audacity Forum

Hello

I just joined. I downloaded Audacity. I want to put music from a cassette together with a voice onto the computer and then burn a CD. I thought I set up the hardware okay. I plugged the pink cord from a microphone in pink jack on puter. I also plugged lineouts from tape player into computer. I tried to see how it would sound. Audacity had 2 "volume control panels" open. The right one is most likely for the cassette player (even though there is a microphone icon there). The volume control appears to show that the left side is only working although I plugged a Y jack into the computer. The left panel shows no sound being "transferred" to the computer from the mic. I cannot hear anything either so have no other way of knowing except by looking at the panels. What am I doing wrong and how can I correct the problem? I also adjusted volume on cassette player, Volume control on computer and VC in Audacity.

Thanks
GB

Read some tutorials.
Prepare you that you will probably need:
- either to use a small mixer to mix your cassete and mic signals
- or to record first your cassete, and then record the mic, while having the first digital track in playback.

Start by learning how to record cassete. Use line-in input of your computer (usually icon with arrow pointing to the center of several circles).

From a tutorial:
To record: Set the recording device and input source, adjust the input level, then press the red Record button.
1) Set Recording Device either in the Audio I/O tab of Preferences or in Device Toolbar. Audio I/O Preferences lets you choose stereo recording if required.
2) Set input source for that device (for example, microphone or line-in) in the dropdown selector of the Mixer Toolbar, or (on some systems) at Recording Device in the Audio I/O tab of Preferences or in Device Toolbar.
3) Adjust input level using the right-hand slider on the Mixer Toolbar. Correct adjustment of level before recording is essential to avoid noise or distortion.

<<Y jack>> -- I do not understand what you mean.
You cannot mix mic and tapedeck signals since they are very different in volume.
For the same reason you cannot put one to left on the other to right channels.

<<I cannot hear anything either so have no other way of knowing except by looking at the panels.>>
That is normal.
The meters are good enough. Set the volume so that the meters show no clipping.
There are two ways to get sound out:
1. By windows Mixer (Windows Volume Control) -- depends on which a) OS b) soundard drivers you have.
2. You get a bit delayed sound by using Edit>Preferences > Audio IO> Software Playthrough.
3. The third way is to play the sound after you finish your recording, of course.

gbsk wrote:The left panel shows no sound being "transferred" to the computer from the mic.

The panel with speaker shows volume of sound going out of Audacity. If Audacity plays no sound --- it shows nothing.

Just to add to Jan's reply - you can find Audacity tutorials on the Audacity Wiki at: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorials

You will find lots of other useful stuff from the Wiki main page: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... _Home_Page

The manual is also a good source of Audacity info: http://audacityteam.org/help/documentation

And I believe there are other "how to use Audacity" tutorials out there on t'interweb-land - just do a bit of Googling

WC

Thanks for those who replied. I could not figure out Audacity. I used another program and recorded a music and a voice file separately. I now need to mix them together in one file or recording. I will then burn a copy. My question is how do I mix them together so I can then burn a copy?

Thanks

I forgot to say that I put the files as MP3 files. I did read on Audacity that I need to make them into different files. I downloaded a file program called LAME that is supposed to make them into different files but cannot figure out how to use the lame to make the MP3 into different files. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

(I wonder what was easier with other software. Never mind.)

You want to import all tracks (file -> import).
I reccomend importing original recording in WAV, since MP3 means decrease in quality.
You can ofcourse import MP3 a other formats, too.
File -> Import.
Note that audacity does not copy the data, but will continue use the files you name. (Depends on configuration and data type). So you whould not delete/move/modify the wav files afterwords if you does not want to loose your project.


Mixing is done on export. You can also make the mix by selectiong the tracks and Tracks>Mix and render.

Before mixing, use Pan and Volume settings of each track. Apply effects as needed. (You might want to normalize your tracks to -3 or -6 dB). You can use Volume-Envelope if you wish.
Use playbackt to hear the result.

Take care to avoid clipping during the mix. (If you have two tracks, consider set volume of each to -3dB, unless they
are normalized to -3 or -6 dB peaks already.)

You can export to Wav and other formats.
You can export to MP3 if you instal LAME (lame_enc.dll) ad discribed on documentation.

Burning has to be done by some other software. Make sure to export Wav, stereo, 44100Hz, 16bit. (This is the default setting when exporting Wav.)
Again I do not recomend MP3, I recomend WAV for making CD.

READ SOME DOCUMENTATION