I am only hearing white noise

[mocohen]

I previously used audacity once before to record a radio show which was a mix of music tracks and myself speaking; everything was fine. Now I am preparing a second show. Now, when I record/play back a track of music I have imported from i-tunes to audacity everything is OK still i.e I can hear the music, but when I try to record myself speaking all I get is a white noise hiss. I have tried varying all the settings but nothing has worked. Any suggestions.

[kozikowski]

What kind of microphone do you have, how is it connected and do you have it selected in the Device Toolbar?

http://manual.audacityteam.org/help/man ... olbar.html

I assume you're speaking against a music bed and you're using the overdubbing or multi-track instructions to get there.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/help/man ... rdubs.html

I was very clear in the segment I wrote that you need to have straight recording working perfectly before you start turning on special purpose overdubbing tools. They'll just making troubleshooting more difficult.

You can launch Audacity and click once inside the red recording meters. In a second, they will wake up and meter your microphone. If you get nothing, then you need to start finding out why. Start with the Device Toolbar, then on to the Audacity Preferences > Devices. and then forward to Windows Control Panels. Your microphnoe is getting lost somewhere.

You also need to know if you're using a USB microphone to connect it first. Then run Audacity.

Koz