Teaching AUDACITY on Zoom

Apologies!!! My last topic post was terribly phrased… this is essentially a new topic:

I teach a brief section on AUDACITY (in a multimedia class) via ZOOM , and I’ve had major audio issues:

  1. I need to unplug my headphones for my “live” students to hear me properly (and to hear the Audacity demonstrations too), so I’ve been taking them on and off during class.
  2. Also, I record my ZOOM classes (automatically) to upload to YouTube later, but the Audacity Demos sound terrible (and it must be what it sounds like to my live students too)! The videos are useless in terms of demonstrating anything in Audacity that involves sound quality.

I’ve tried everything I can find online… but nothing helps. Any advice for me?
– Ira / MAC Catalina

Any advice for me?

I think the original phrasing was OK. You’re trying to do everything on one computer and you can’t do that. The software doesn’t work that way.

See original reply.

Koz

The problem is that to do what you want, you will need to specify that:

  • the mic and the output from Zoom go into Audacity,
  • the mic and Audacity output goes into Zoom
  • Zoom output goes to Audacity and headphones
  • Audacity output goes to Zoom and headphones
  • and no feedback paths

Unfortunately, neither macOS or Windows can do that without additional software.
There are commercial “virtual audio cable” apps available for Mac and Linux that aim to provide this functionality, but they tend to be a bit tricky to use. We do not provide support for these products.