Mackie, iTunes and Audacity....oh my!!!

[hbcofedmond]

Background: Just purchased a new computer for the sound booth at our church. It is loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium. We used to use Adobe Audition 1.5 to record sermons and special songs but it is not compatible with 7. So I downloaded Audacity Beta. We have also recently purchased a Mackie 3204-vlz3 sound board. It has a USB port that allows us to go direct to the computer's usb port for recording and playback. With the new computer, I've updated iTunes to the latest version.

With my previous computer, I was able to play a song in iTunes and record it in Audition. However, with this new hardware, iTunes and Audacity are not playing well together. If I have Audacity open and recording audio from the Mackie, iTunes will not play a song. If I have iTunes open and playing a song, I can not record in Audacity (pressing record button simply gives me a blinking timeline at -0-). I have the input to Audacity set to the Mackie and the output for sound reinforcement set to the Mackie.

I really need to have the ability to use iTunes to play an accompaniment while I'm recording the vocals in Audacity. Please help me with any known solutions or suggestions.

Thanks,
Micah

[kozikowski]

I really need to have the ability to use iTunes to play an accompaniment while I'm recording the vocals in Audacity. Please help me with any known solutions or suggestions.

Wait.. iTunes playback While you're recording a show? I don't understand how you ever got that to work. Two different processes trying to address the same sound card usually results in small, intimate explosions.

Give us the exact details on how you used to do this.
WinXP? Before that?

I could understand an analog sound board getting the "headphone" feed from the computer on one of its faders for mixing live music into the show. The master output of the board then goes to the computer Line-In for recording. I think I could force Windows to do that.

Koz

[hbcofedmond]

It was on an XP machine. Before we upgraded to the Mackie (3 months ago) I used the computer's speaker output to feed an input channel on the sound board. I then used an open bus output from the board to feed the microphone input on the computer. I had no issues playing an iTunes song, feeding it into the board and then using the output of that channel to feed it into Audition via the microphone input.

It also worked with the new board and previously mentioned computer via USB cable. However, these programs are not playing nice on the new computer.

In playing with Audacity tonight, I've discovered that I get a Latency Problem report when I make a change (such as changing from mone to stereo recording) and then try to record a second track. I'm getting the feeling I may have more than one issue here. I definitely need to get the issue fixed between iTunes, Audacity and my sound card.

Thanks.

[hbcofedmond]

I think today I'll try playing my iPod through the board to the computer to see if I can record voice over accompaniment that way. After all, the songs on the computer are on my iPod.