Audacity crashing on Big Sur

[sh575]

I have a mid-2014 Mac Book running Big Sur and Audacity 2.4.2
My goal is to record calls at home (trying to avoid going in to the radio station in this time of Covid)
I have a Blue Yeti for my voice in my little dead sound silo in the basement
I have Soundflower running to connect the google call with Audacity
I created an Apple Midi Aggregate combining Yeti and Soundflower, and set up the Audacity Device correctly (input is aggregate, 4 channels) - Apple set up in System Preferences is correct for this set up also (re input and output)
For a brief, shining moment it all worked and I recorded myself on the Yeti and the google call I made on the 4 tracks. It was an exciting moment. And just that - a moment.
Now I cannot repeat that initial brief success - every time I make a call while poised to go in front of the Yeti and hit the record button Audacity either closes itself altogether, or stops and I get the spinning rainbow wheel.
Any advice?
thank you
SM575

[billw58]

Does Audacity crash if you try to record using the internal microphone and play back with the internal speakers?
-- Bill

[sh575]

No it doesn't

[sh575]

Nor does it crash if I record into Audacity with the Yeti , or just use the Soundflower add on - it seems to be the Aggregate that it can't manage

[billw58]

Have you checked the aggregate device in Audio MIDI Setup? I'm wondering if you disconnected the Yeti mic that the aggregate device would fail? Something changed between your first recording and subsequent ones.
-- Bill

[sh575]

Thanks Bill - I'll try that and see what effect (will be a few hours - have to run a long errand at the moment)
SH575

[sh575]

Good evening Bill, and thanks for your patience
I've attached the three relevant screen shots (I think they're the relevant ones)
And indeed, on this evening's test run all went well. Bit of a mystery that...
Perhaps the lesson is to double check every setting just before lift off.
I'll try again tomorrow and see if it holds.
Thank you
sh575

[sh575]

Did a test run and everything worked fine until I pressed Stop
Then Audacity immediately crashed
Fortunately the recording was recovered by Audacity and could be saved, but that seems a bit dodgy as a way of having to do business all the time.
I did not take a screen shot of the crash message - do you need to see that? I'll run it again and assuming it crashes again I'll have something to show you.
Thanks
sh575

[billw58]

I've been playing with this on my Big Sur Macbook Air. I'm using Blackhole instead of Soundflower, and an AT2020 USB microphone.

It seems (from two trials) that I can set up the aggregate device (consisting of the AT2020 and Blackhole) and get it to work once. On second try I get a PortAudio error or not sound at all.

I'll continue to investigate.

-- Bill

[kozikowski]

myself on the Yeti and the google call I made

It's nearly impossible to record your live microphone and a chat call at the same time on one machine. Google Voice, Skype, and Zoom are actively fighting you. It's their job to maintain perfect, total, absolute control of the computer sound pathways at all times. There is no "and a recorder" unless the recording is being hosted by Zoom, Skype, etc. That's why those recording services are offered.

There was a forum post from someone who got the service to work only to have the chat program collapse the conversation and rebuild it in real time without the recorder.

There are certainly ways to do this with multiple machines, but nobody wants to do it that way.

Koz