Sound Activated Recording

[Romeo-Charlie]

I cannot get Sound Activated Recording to work on my Audacity ® 1.3.7 (Unicode) loaded onto my MacBook Pro. I am recording vinyl. Any ideas?

[waxcylinder]

Why do you need to use SAR for recording vinyl? I don't follow

WC

[steve]

Audacity 1.3.7 is obsolete. The current version is 1.3.14 which you can get from here: http://audacityteam.org/download/

You would probably be best to not use Sound Activated Recording when recording vinyl. If you get Sound Activated Recording working correctly you may find that recording occurs during "silence" due to crackles on the record, and recording may pause during quiet parts. I would record normally and then trim out unwanted silences after recording.

[waxcylinder]

If you want to record it unattended and stop recording at the end of the LP you can always use the Timer Record functionality - available from the Tranpsort menu.

This has the downside of potentially "playing" the null centre track untill you get back to it, and thus unnecessarily wearing your stylus - and I certainly couldn't record LPs unattended as undoubtedly at least one of my cats would leap up onto the TT

WC

[Romeo-Charlie]

PS. I can record and hear fine, I just have to press the record button at the right time and wanted to have Audacity do it automatically.

[steve]

I can record and hear fine

Sorry for the confusion Romeo-Charlie, I think that waxcylinder was replying to a post by another user that jumped into this conversation with an unrelated issue, but while he was typing I disapproved the unrelated post. I have notified waxcylinder so he may delete his last post as I don't think that it is now relevant.

[steve]

I just have to press the record button at the right time and wanted to have Audacity do it automatically.

The easiest way is to start Audacity recording first, then when the recording is finished, select the silent part at the beginning of the recording and delete it.

[Romeo-Charlie]

OK, its not the end of the word to press record and delete the silent beginning and end if all else works well.

[steve]

OK, its not the end of the word to press record and delete the silent beginning and end if all else works well.

I think that is definitely the best method, but if you are still interested in looking into why Sound Activated Recording is not working for you, we can still look into that question. (Sound Activated Recording should work).

What actually happens (or does not happen) when you try to use Sound Activated Recording? What do you have the "Sound Activation Level" set at?

[Romeo-Charlie]

I set everything up, play the LP and nothing happens unless I click the 'record' button. I have tried activation levels at -36dB and -60dB. I have also updated to version 1.3.14