Audacity Forum

i am trying to record thru M-audio Duo usb interface. my computer keeps recording from the internal mike. i went to preferences/devices/recording and no usb option appeared. help

Did you try selecting your device in Windows first? If Windows doesn't show any USB devices, then the unit isn't connected. Can you try a new cable?

This is a discontinued device. Have you had it very long?

Koz

not sure i know how to select in windows. just got the device. website doesn't specify driver for windows 7 so i used xp

noblejohn wrote:not sure i know how to select in windows.

See "Detecting USB and Firewire devices" here:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Troub ... the_cursor

To test if the device is "seen" by Windows, right-click the speaker icon by the clock > Recording Devices. Right-click > "Show Disabled Devices" if necessary. If the device appears, right-click > Enable. If the device is seen there and enabled and you plugged it in after opening Audacity, restart Audacity.

And are you really using Audacity 1.2 (see Help > About Audacity)? 1.2 on Windows 7 may crash when you stop recording. Use 1.3.13 instead:
http://audacity.googlecode.com/files/au ... 1.3.13.exe

noblejohn wrote: just got the device. website doesn't specify driver for windows 7 so i used xp

All of which means the device may not even be compatible with Windows 7, and definitely not with M-Audio drivers designed for XP. See:
http://forums.m-audio.com/showthread.ph ... dows-7-RC2

Reading the one post there where the Duo did work in Windows 7, if Windows doesn't recognise the Duo I would suggest uninstalling the XP drivers then go to Device Manager in the Windows Control Panel, expand "Sound, video and game controllers" by clicking on the arrow, then right-click over the Duo (it may have a yellow question mark by it) > Properties. Try the "Update driver" button. It will probably only find some generic Windows driver which is not ideal, but it may have more chance of working than with an XP driver.


Gale

thanks. the 841am post helped me get the device recognized by windows and set as the recording device for audacity. i am now able to record thru the device onto audacity. now i have a different problem. the display lags when i record the first track, but it records correctly. the display seems to be driven by the musical input. but when i go to record track 2, track 1 is not being played back in real time. got a message once saying something was hidden behind zero and i mightr have to drag it forward??? the message included a reference to latency. only saw the message once.

noblejohn wrote:the display lags when i record the first track, but it records correctly.

It is not possible to draw the recorded audio instantly to the screen. There will always be a short delay while the waveform display from the recorded audio is calculated and sent to the display. The delay should be pretty short (a fraction of a second) but will depend on how efficiently and quickly the computer can do the task.

noblejohn wrote:the message included a reference to latency. only saw the message once.

When a second track is recorded, there will be a tendency for the track to record everything a little bit late compared to the first track due to the time taken for the audio signal to work it's way through the computer sound system and down to the hard drive. This is called "recording latency". Audacity applies "latency compensation" that shifts all recorded tracks apart from the first track a little to the left to compensate for recording latency.

If, for any reason, recording stops immediately after it has started, then the track that is produced will be extremely short, or even zero length. After latency compensation such a short track will be shifted entirely behind (to the left of) the "0" on the time line. I expect that this was the warning message that you saw.

You say it only happened once - is it recording OK now?

i was still having the problem at last posting, but i figured it out. under audacity's recording preferences, "sound activation" was enabled. thanks.

noblejohn wrote:i was still having the problem at last posting, but i figured it out. under audacity's recording preferences, "sound activation" was enabled. thanks.

Glad it's fixed, but the warning message about latency behind zero and the "Sound Activated Recording" option confirms you are using Audacity Beta, so I moved this topic to that board.

Please help us to help you by posting to the correct board for the version of Audacity you are using.


Gale