Monitoring turns off every time I play a track

[Fla_Panther]

Hi all,

I don't know what happened or changed in my setup, maybe I clicked on something by accident. It used to be that I could open a WAV file in Audacity and also play my guitar and hear it through my speakers at the same time. I could figure out what I wanted to overdub but also I could listen to how my guitar set up (effects, etc) sounded against what was already recorded. This would allow me to tweak guitar settings to get the sound I wanted before recording.

Then today something changed. As soon as I hit Play on an audio track Monitoring stops. If I stop the track I have to re-enable Monitoring in order to hear myself through the speakers again ... I can either listen to audio playback or monitor myself playing, but cannot do both at the same time. Oddly, if I press record I CAN hear both the audio playback as well as monitor myself, but why should I have to go into Record to do this?

Any idea how to get my system back to allowing me to turn on Monitor and not have it keep turning itself off on me?

[kozikowski]

It sounds like you were listening to Stereo Mix instead of Audacity Playback. Stereo Mix is selected in Windows control panels and is a feed of Everything Playing on the Computer.

If you like to record YouTube sound or other internet services, Stereo Mix is the service you mess with to get that.

Koz

[Fla_Panther]

Thanks for the response. Stereo Mix is disabled. I assume that's how it's supposed to be, as IIRC my USB recording device had to be enabled for it to work at all. Though I just checked and I am able to enable both at the same time. I then tested in Audacity and I still have the same situation as I described below.

[steve]

You've not given enough information for us to work with.

Which version of Windows?
Which version of Audacity?
What sort of "effects"? Hardware stomp pedals?
How is your guitar connected to the computer? Have you mic'd up your guitar amp?
What sort of sound card?
How / where are your speakers connected to the computer?
Is it a laptop computer?
Any other information that may be relevant?

[Fla_Panther]

Here ya go:

Which version of Windows?
Windows 7

Which version of Audacity?
2.0.6

What sort of "effects"? Hardware stomp pedals?
Digitech RP200

How is your guitar connected to the computer? Have you mic'd up your guitar amp?
Guitar to Digitech RP200, Digitech RP200 to Behringer UCG102, Behringer UCG102 into USB

What sort of sound card?
B75MA-E33 onboard RealTek ALC887

How / where are your speakers connected to the computer?
3.5mm jack of the onboard sound card

Is it a laptop computer?
No

Any other information that may be relevant?
None that I can think of

[steve]

I don't see how that would ever have worked without a very noticeable delay on the guitar sound. The problem being that there is no hardware route from the guitar input to the speaker output. You may have been able to minimise the delay if you were using other software (not Audacity) with ASIO drivers, but routing the input from one audio device (the UCG 102) to the output of another audio device (the RealTek ALC887) through software using standard Windows drivers will almost certain cause a very noticeable delay between what you play and what you hear.

Unfortunately the Behringer documentation is a bit vague on this point. It says (page 5, GUITAR LINK UCG102 Software Installation Guide)

1.3 Device drivers and latency

A device driver is an interface that ensures communication between
the software (audio application) and the hardware. In recent years,
the PC platform has witnessed the establishment of several different
driver models for sound cards. Some of these drivers cannot be
used for simultaneous recording and playback or for working with
software plug-ins, since they do not support the full performance
provided by professional sound cards and cause a long time delay
(this is called “latency”).

You will normally find the selection of a driver model for computer
hardware in the standard default settings of the software you are
using. If necessary, check the documentation for your software.
Use the Control Panel to set up a lower latency. The smaller the value,
the better. If audio dropouts occur, try increasing the latency in stages.

Audacity does not ship with ASIO support due to a conflict in the licensing terms (ASIO is not open source).

I don't know how much the lack of ASIO will affect monitoring if you monitor via the UCG 202, but monitoring via the UCG 202 headphone socket should give you the lowest latency achievable with your hardware.

[Fla_Panther]

You are correct, there is a pretty noticeable delay. I've used the latency correction trick (Preferences -> Recording -> Latency Correction) to get it pretty close. From there typically what I do is turn on monitoring and play what I already have laid down, and jam with it not worrying about the delay. I check how my effects sound against what I already have, and once I'm happy with that I turn up the volume on my click track and turn down my speakers so I can focus on my click track. I'm usually off by no more than .01 of a second at most, very often I'm dead on. In any case, this has nothing to do with the problem I've posted about, but thank you for asking.

[steve]

Well if the delay does not bother you, check that "Software Playthrough" is enabled in the Transport menu.

[Fla_Panther]

Yes, I do have Software Playthrough enabled.

[Gale Andrews]

How was Windows monitoring turned on before, when pressing Play did not turn the monitoring off? Are you using "Listen to this device" in Windows Sound?

Do you need to use the onboard sound card for monitoring? Can you set the Audacity playback device in Device Toolbar to the UCG and does that give you the Audacity track mixed with your guitar in the UCG headphones output? The UCG manual is vague but claims you can play along to a song playing on the computer.


Gale