Two layers recorded produces no sound?!?

[vyvyan]

Hello,

I am using Audacity (Ver. 1.2.6)on my Widows 7 laptop and i am recording myself playing guitar. I recorded the first layer of guitar and it is working perfectly. It records the sound smoothly and when i play it back it sounds great.... But then when i recorded a second layer of guitar over the top the audio stopped working..

If i make one layer come out of the Left speaker and one come out of the Right speaker then i can hear them... But if they are both on center it doesnt work at all and i cant hear anything..

also one of them works if i mute the other one... ALSO when the 2nd layer gets to the end, the 1st layer starts playing again..

--thanks to anyone if they can help me with this

[kozikowski]

I would probably start by not using Audacity 1.2. Audacity 1.2 stopped being supported, developed, patched and corrected a long time ago, and it can have problems with modern computers.

Grab Audacity 1.3 from here:

http://audacityteam.org/download/

If you use Lame and FFMpeg software, get those from the same place. Don't use older versions.

You can have both 1.2 and 1.3 installed, but only use one at a time. Audacity 1.3 Projects will not open in 1.2

Koz

[vyvyan]

Yeah im using 1.3 but its doing the same thing... any ideas why?

[kozikowski]

Does it start working if you listen on headphones? You can have monitoring problems that do this. If you damage a stereo recording just exactly right, it will not play on a mono speaker system.

You need to set Edit > Preferences> Recording > Overdub - Play tracks while recording new ones.

Koz

[vyvyan]

nope it doesnt work on headphones either..

[kozikowski]

nope it doesnt work on headphones either..

Please don't make us dig. Did you go down that preferences pathway and was it set OK?

Koz

[vyvyan]

Yeah, that was already set to OK, but i think you misunderstood my question... I just read my initial post and I think i phrased it wrong..

Basicly, the problem is that when i record 1 layer I can play it back ad it sounds fine... But when two layers are playing simultaneously you can no longer hear them.. Although if you put the layers on opposite sides of speakers (So, the top layers plays from the LEFT speaker and the bottom layer plays from the RIGHT speaker) then they work...

[steve]

Basicly, the problem is that when i record 1 layer I can play it back ad it sounds fine... But when two layers are playing simultaneously you can no longer hear them.. Although if you put the layers on opposite sides of speakers (So, the top layers plays from the LEFT speaker and the bottom layer plays from the RIGHT speaker) then they work...

That description sounds like the two tracks are exact copies, but with one inverted