Sound in all other programs, but suddenly none in Audacity!

[kozikowski]

I think it's time to involve The Developers.

I launched Audacity 2 on my OS-X 10.6.8 Mac and turned the Audacity "Speaker Icon" slider down to zero. I got a very similar symptom to SenorN. I had bouncing meters and blue waves and no speaker sound at all.

I closed Audacity like that and killed the speaker sound on my Mac.

All of it.

FireFox, Safari, QuickTime, iTunes, Audio-Midi Setup, System Preferences and toolbar speaker slider were all adjusted normally and silent. I didn't try restarting, but I did start Audacity and pushed the speaker slider back to normal. All the Mac Application speaker sound came back to life including Audacity.

Koz

[PGA]

Nobody seems to have asked the obvious question: is the output volume turned up in the Mixer Toolbar or is it down at zero?

[kozikowski]

His, yes. That was checked in this message...

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 58#p182009

Although SenorN didn't directly respond that it was turned up. That would be good. Also, Get SenorN to post the screenshot of a normal show.

Mine was turned down when I closed Audacity.

Koz

[PGA]

Koz,
My apologies. That one didn't register when I read through the dialogue.
Peter

[kozikowski]

None needed. I've read through this at least three times trying to keep all the circumstances and conditions in my head. I've spoken to SenorN in PM and said how pleased we were that he wanted to continue to troubleshoot this with us. He said he's willing.

I tried the Speaker Volume Controls on two different Macs and they're both broken slightly different ways. I think the Output Module makes some unfortunate assumptions and now that we have repeatable hardware failures, we should be able to nail it down.

Are you on Windows? Launch anything that makes noise and then launch Audacity 2. Run the Speaker slider all the way down and minimize Audacity. Do Not touch any volume controls. Try to play the other program. Is it silent?

Koz

[PGA]

Hi Koz,
Yes, I'm on Windows (7 Home Premium 64-bit). I followed those instructions precisely and no, it wasn't silent. The music played fine (via Windows Media Player). I then went a couple of steps further. I opened an Audacity project, soloed one track, took the speaker slider back up to full and pressed "Play". I now had both lots of sound coming through the speakers at the same time: that from WMP and that from Audacity. The soundcard is Realtek HD Audio.
regards,
Peter

[kozikowski]

Cool. So this may be a Mac thing. I'll have many more machines to mess with at work.
But back to the thread. Why would one Windows install of Audacity be silent -- and right after a Windows Update?
Koz

[PGA]

If the machine has both motherboard audio and a separate audio card, is it possible that the Windows update has switched the "default" audio from one to the other - and this other is muted or disabled? I'm clutching at straws here. I've never come across anything like this before?

[kozikowski]

Neither have we. That's what's so strange about this. Apparently, everything is set correctly and all the other services on the machine work perfectly...but Audacity is silent. Reinstalling -- correctly -- doesn't help.

By the way, this problem exists over multiple time zones, so nobody is jumping in the car to resolve this and the actual user with the problem is not technically savvy.

That's why it got my attention when I started having speaker problems and I asked you about how Windows handles speaker sound. Under Windows, it's perfectly natural have Audacity silent and the other services work perfectly. This lead directly to getting a screen capture of the errant computer desktop.

Odd that we haven't heard back from SenorN.

Koz

[PGA]

Patience is a virtue. Let's wait for the man!