Single channel choice crashes! Help!

[polkat]

Well, I don't see any setting in Audacity for Asio. Doesn't that refer to streaming video/audio? I'm recording from a mic. I have tried all the different baud and bit rates with no effect. I've tried changing just about everything one can change in Preferrences with no effect.

The Windows Sound Recorder (which I think is mono) works just fine. I also had N-Trak-Studio installed maybe a year ago with the same hardware/software as present, and it recorded in mono just fine.

Can't think of much else to do.

[steve]

Sorry to bug you about this, but I can't see where you say that you have updated to Audacity 1.3.13. Have you updated to 1.3.13?

Well, I don't see any setting in Audacity for Asio.

No, Audacity does not use ASIO (Audacity cannot be shipped with ASIO support due to license restrictions), but some other audio recording programs do (N-Trak-Studio uses ASIO). If ASIO is being used then the standard Windows drivers are bypassed.

The Windows Sound Recorder (which I think is mono) works just fine.

Now that is encouraging.
Try this:
1) set up Windows Sound Recorder to record something from your microphone (plugged into the SB Live). Confirm that this works correctly and produces a mono WAV file before you proceed.
2) Set Audacity to record from the "Sound Mapper".
3) Set the default sample rate to 44100 (Edit > Preferences > Quality)
4) Set Audacity to record mono.
5) At the bottom of the Transport menu, ensure that "Software Playthrough" is OFF (not selected).
6) Cross your fingers and click the Record button.

[Gale Andrews]

Gale may be able to help you with the memory dump.

You need to install Windows Debugging tools and WhoCrashed, as explained before at http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 56#p143214 .

This link may give you a bit more explanation, though it refers mainly to Vista:
http://tinyurl.com/7pzbdu

Audacity 1.3.13 has a new version of the PortAudio Audio I/O library that Audacity uses, so you should definitely try it.

Can you think of any other relevant things you did when you built the machine and installed Win XP that you may not have done this time?


Gale

[polkat]

I've been thinking about that for several days now, and...no, I can't think of any differences between installs. I'll give Steve's ideas a try and report back.

I presently live in a bad area for bandwidth, and cannot download anything as big as 1.3.13.

Okay, tried Steve's ideas and here's what happened. First, yes, the Windows Sound Recorder is definately recording mono wave files just fine using this sound card and drivers. No crashes this way, although the files are recorded at a weird baud (22050) but it works fine. So I tried Steve's setup and it crashed as always. I have thought about reinstalling Audacity, but i understand that the setup files are retained from the last installation, so I guess if there's a problem there, a reinstall won't fix it.

Gale, I'm not a programmer (although I understand very basic programming). Even if I found something with those programs I wouldn't know what to do about it. Thanks!

[Gale Andrews]

the Windows Sound Recorder is definately recording mono wave files just fine using this sound card and drivers. No crashes this way, although the files are recorded at a weird baud (22050) but it works fine. So I tried Steve's setup and it crashed as always. I have thought about reinstalling Audacity, but i understand that the setup files are retained from the last installation, so I guess if there's a problem there, a reinstall won't fix it.

By all means you can reset Audacity's settings to default. Worth a shot. Exit Audacity, rename the attached "audacity.txt" to "audacity.cfg" (without quotes) then paste it into Documents and Settings<your user name>Application DataAudacity and say "yes" when Windows asks if you want to overwrite it.

Also you could try right-click over audacity.exe in the folder you installed it to > Properties, then look at the "Compatibility" tab. It's usually best with no compatibility, but you could try enabling compatibility with earlier Windows to see if it helped.

If you get the zip of Audacity 1.3.13 it's "only" 7.6 MB because it does not have a Manual:
http://audacity.googlecode.com/files/au ... 1.3.13.zip

Can you perhaps download it overnight?

I'm not a programmer (although I understand very basic programming). Even if I found something with those programs I wouldn't know what to do about it.

You do have to download the program and the Microsoft debugging tools, but the Whocrashed program does all the work in reading the dump. You could get an answer as easy as something like this:

Whocrashed sample output

whocrashed.png (19.93 KiB) Viewed 1041 times

Gale

[polkat]

Well, finally got 1.3.13 downloaded and installed. Nice improvements! But it didn't help the problem.

This just occured to me, and I realize it's a long shot. I use a mic through a small preamp into the line-in jack on the sound card. My preamp only puts out a mono signal and the sound card input is stereo. So I made a cable that goes from mono (at the preamp end) to stereo (at the sound card). I wonder if this results in Audacity sensing an incoming stereo signal and crashing because it's Preferences are set for mono recording?

Yea! Doesn't sound likely, but I thought I'd ask. Thanks!

[steve]

Yea! Doesn't sound likely, but I thought I'd ask.

I agree, it sounds extremely unlikely.

I think we've gone as far as we can without using a debugging tool (as suggested by Gale).

[Gale Andrews]

I think typically a SoundBlaster would offer the left channel if the recording software asked for mono from a stereo stream.

I see you did not download audacity.txt. Can you try, that and look at Audacity's compatibility mode?


Gale

[polkat]

Nobody mentioned an audacity.txt file before, and I just searched all over the site and couldn't find it. Where is it located?

Other then that, I have downloaded Who Crashed? and what I 'think' are the Microsoft Debugging files (a file called winsdk_web right?) from the Microsoft site. Now I have to try and learn how to use them.

I'll report back here if I get any results. Otherwise I guess I'll just learn to deal with stereo only recording. Thanks!

[steve]

Nobody mentioned an audacity.txt file before, and I just searched all over the site and couldn't find it. Where is it located?

4 posts back.
Gale Andrews - Sun Dec 04, 2011 1:51 am
Near the bottom of his post.