I recently purchased a Behringer Podcast Studio USB (mixer, headphones, microphone, UCA200 USB converter) to hook up to my Windows 7 PC. I have used Audacity 2.2.2 previously, on a limited basis. I set up the XENYX502 mixer as they suggested. While having Audacity open I can record using the Behringer equipment but I can not listen to the Audacity playback using the headphones plugged in to the mixer. I know the headphones work as I have plugged them directly into the computer and listened to my recording. I called the Behringer tech support and the Behringer tech said the problem has to be Audacity because if the mixer is recording then it should be playing back. The drivers are current and I checked the Preferences and the Playback and Recording are set for USB Audio CODEC. Any advice?
I started this response three times.
How do you have those devices connected—in detail? I don’t think I see any way for that combination to do what you want, but maybe I’m making the wrong assumptions.
Is the goal to do overdubbing? Play live music to an old backing track?
Koz
That seems like kind-of a screwy setup for overdubbing… Ideally, you’d like a USB interface with a microphone input and zero-latency hardware-monitoring. That kind of interface will allow you to hear yourself (without a delay through the computer) and hear the backing track at the same time.
You can plug the headphones to the USB interface or your computer (to monitor yourself and the backing track) but you might get excessive latency (delay).
I might have a work-around… I don’t like it, but it might work… Maybe there’s a better way…
Configure Audacity so you’re monitoring the backing track through the interface. (You can check by temporarily plugging your headphones into the interface.)
Plug one-channel (left or right) of the interface into the mixer input. Now, with the headphones plugged into the mixer you should hear the backing-track in one ear.
You can pan the mic to the opposite ear, or leave it panned to the center, but either way you should be able to hear yourself in the headphones.
Now when you record, one channel should have you (the microphone) solo.
The other channel will either have a copy of the backing track or a mix of the mic & backing track, depending on how you’re panned… You can discard that channel in post-production, or you can set the computer for mono recording and just ignore it. (With mono recording you’ll pick-up the left channel so you’ll want the solo mic on the left.)
So, you should have the new track and the original backing track that you can mix & pan as desired.
I might have a work-around
Yeah. I did, too. Plug the UCA-200 into the tape connections on the mixer. I think you can force the mixer to mix live performance with Tape Return which will turn out to be Audacity overdub playback. The natural mixer provides Zero Latency Monitoring.
That’s why I asked about what’s there. That will go a long way.
Koz