Windows 7 Pro/Audacity 2.10
I have been using Audacity for quite a while and love the program, but I have never tried anything as complicated (for me anyway) as attempting to record voice and audio at the same time (trying to mix live singing with pre-recorded music). I am using the stereo Audio Out feature from my music player using a short standard L/R audio cable necked down to a mini 3.8 stereo input jack and a set of stereo headphones. I have tried multiple input configurations such as connecting the music player to the line-in jack or the mic jack on the back of the computer and have the headphones connected to mic/phone jack on the front of the computer) and have tried multiple configurations using:
Windows Direct Sound
MME
Windows Waspi
Along with:
Microsoft Sound Mapper
Microphone(Realtek High Definition)
Line-In (Realtek High Definition)
And individual property configurations of speaker/microphone/optical/audio devices, etc. but I can not get a good recording of both voice and music at the same time. I either get good quality voice and little or no music, or vise versa. I have spent about three days working on this project and it is really getting frustrating because I can not get the volumes of both music and voice to come close to one another no matter what configuration I use.
If anyone can please assist me in setting this up I would greatly appreciate it and thank you in advance for any and all help. - Graye
Personally I wouldn’t even bother doing it like that.
Import the song file into Audacity.
Set the Recording Device in Device Toolbar to your preferred microphone.
Ensure Transport > Overdub is on.
You can’t hear yourself live without delay using the equipment you have, so turn Transport > Software Playthrough off. If necessary, have one earpiece of your headphones off your ear then you can hear your voice acoustically.
Press Record. You’ll hear the song while recording. Your singing is on a different track to the music so you have the big advantage that you can edit the singing without affecting the music track.
The way to do that is, as Gale wrote, Import the pre-recorded music into Audacity, then record the live singing (which will appear as a new track below the imported music). This is called “overdubbing” (or “over-dub recording”). There’s some informations and tutorials about overdubbing in the manual: Audacity Manual
And that’s to do just what you asked for. Nowhere is it written you can’t do that multiple times and add voices as you go. Do you want to sing as three people?
There is a way to record the singing and music without the import into Audacity, without a hardware mixer or interface, and at the cost of having the music and singing recorded to the same track. But we won’t say how unless you insist on it.
Audacity 2.2.2
I was the original author of this post and managed to solve the original problem. Using the software version of Karafun Player (2.6.0 build 6) and my Xenyx USB Mixer I was able to sing and record at the same time without any problems. Unfortunately the last big update to Windows 10 (unasked for and unwanted btw…) wiped my computer out. First the audio went and then video, then main board. I had to start from scratch and reinstall everything from the main board drivers on up. I am now back up and running on Windows 7 Pro (and debating whether to redo the free upgrade again) and have about half of my original reinstalled.
Music is only a passtime for me, but it is a very important past time and a part of my daily routine and for the life of me I can not remember how I had everything set up. I am using the same USB Mixer as before and the same version of Audacity and Karafun as before but simply can not get audacity to record the Karaoke music. It is playing through the computer without any trouble and I am able to sing along with it but it only records my voice and not the karaoke music.
I have tried every configuration of both Audacity and Karafun imaginable but I simply cannot get it to record the music.
Mixer Current settings are MME/Microphone (USB Audio Codec)/Speaker (USB Audio Codec)
