Recording/BT/guitar/Audacity/ M-Audio Pro

[keithmantle]

Hi All, pulling my hair out (whats left of it) I have downloaded a instrumental backing track onto Audacity but cannot record the lead guitar part on another track while listening to the bt and guitar through 2 active computer spkrs, can someone point me in the right direction for the leads configuration front/back of M-Audio and settings in audacity, many thanks Keith

[kozikowski]

We wrote a thing on overdubbing/multitrack. One of the clear ideas right at the top is the ability to make a straight, uncomplicated, vanilla recording before you start throwing around the oddball special settings for multitrack. They just cloud the issue.

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

"M-Audio Pro" doesn't tell us anything. If you Google/Bing that, you get thousands of hits. What do you really have? Point us to a web site.

Koz

[keithmantle]

Hi Koz its a M-Audio fast track pro interface, with usb to a Win/vista laptop, keith

[kozikowski]

Can you hear your performance in the Fast Track headphone connection?
Does the Fast Track show up in Windows Preferences? Is it selected as a recording device?
Koz

[keithmantle]

Thanks for trying to help Koz, I'm just fed up with trying to record something, i thought getting a reasonable interface would simplify things but i'm further from my goal than ever, as you may gather i am not very computer orientated, so i think i'll just carry on playing and not run out of brain cells trying to fathom recording. Thanks again Keith

[PGA]

Keith,
The webpage for the M-Audio Fast Track Pro (see here: http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackPro.html) twice mentions software monitoring via ASIO. As I understand it, Audacity on Windows (in its "as shipped" form) does not support ASIO. We need a knowledgeable forum elf to confirm or refute this.

[keithmantle]

Thanks PGA, I've tried everything i can think of, every permutation of cables /switches and still no joy.

[waxcylinder]

As I understand it, Audacity on Windows (in its "as shipped" form) does not support ASIO. We need a knowledgeable forum elf to confirm or refute this.

You understand correct PGA. And it is a licensing issue rather than a technical one - the IPR belongs to Steinberg and Audacity would have to pay Steinberg to ship with Audacity.

It is perfectly possible to make Audacity work with ASIO though - you just have to be prepared to (and be capable of) building Audacity for yoursef. And once built you cannot distribute this copy to any other user, it must be for personal use only.

See this page in the Wiki: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/ASIO_Audio_Interface
and follow the links.

WC

[steve]

Audacity would have to pay Steinberg to ship with Audacity.

As I understand it, it's not a problem with payment, it is simply an incompatibility of license terms.

Audacity is open source, licensed under terms of GPL v2.http://audacityteam.org/about/license/#license
ASIO is closed source but available free of charge under a non-distributable license http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Featu ... strictions
Under the GPL license terms, Audacity must make the source code freely available, but under the Steinberg license terms Audacity cannot make the source code freely available. It's a choice of open source or not open source and the decision was irreversibly made right from the start that Audacity would be open source and freely available.

If Steinberg were to relax their licensing terms and allow distribution of the source code then Audacity could (and probably would) include ASIO support in Windows builds as standard, but until such time it would be a clear breach of their licensing terms.