My playback sound is distorted?

[CraneHaven]

I am trying to do Lets Plays, and am using this (Audacity) to record my commentary. I use Pinnacle Studio 14 to record my gameplay. I am doing Live commentary which is recording my commentary WHILE I play the game.

Now down to the problem. When I record my voice while recording my gameplay it seems to be working oddly. When I finish my commentary and playback my voice (my commentary) it will be all distorted. Half of it will be me nice and clear and normal talking. But then the others are weird, some of it will cut me off from words into silence. Like the headset cannot pick up my voice. But this only happens WHILE I am recording my gameplay. If I record myself when I am not recording gameplay at the same time, it turns out fine!

What is going on here?

[kozikowski]

record my commentary. I use Pinnacle Studio 14 to record my gameplay.

Two recording programs running on the same machine at the same time? I don't think Audacity has ever been able to do that.

Koz

[CraneHaven]

Oh! so audacity is not able to record properly when another recording program is running?

[steve]

Oh! so audacity is not able to record properly when another recording program is running?

Audacity is unaware of what other programs are running so Audacity does not mind, however, if another audio program takes exclusive control of the sound card then the sound card will be unavailable to Audacity and Audacity will be unable to record.

Running multiple audio programs simultaneously on Windows can be very problematic. For Audacity to work correctly it needs to have access to the sound card but depending on the version of Windows, the sound card drivers and how the sound system is configured Audacity may be denied access.

If you set Audacity to use "MME" as the "Host" and "Microsoft Sound Mapper" as the recording device and set your other recording application to use the same, and then configure the Windows Sound System to use the required audio input from your sound card then it may work.

For the Audacity settings use the Device ToolBar http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Device_Toolbar
To set the system settings use the Windows Control Panel http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Mixer ... es#vistacp
To set up the other audio application refer to its documentation.