[peel] Audacity frustrations

[Stuart Brooks]

Aha that’s because if you press stop (rather than pause) then if you start recording again by pressing the record button it is recording a new track. This will play in parallel with the first recording session on playback and will output that way too.

If you do press stop at a tape flip, then to resume recording you need to choose Append Record (in the Transport Menu, strangely enough) or SHIFT R or SHIFT press record button. This then resumes recording on the same track rather than create a new one. Or just press pause when flipping the tape. 

If you have inadvertently created a multi track recording (6 tracks by the sound of it!) you would need to a bit of editing to move the audio from the lower tracks up to the top track. Or if you’ve just added a few random bits of side 2, just use the Undo feature in Audacity until you have just the one track/waveform (side 1) then record side 2 as an append record.

Stuart

From: Karl Eldridge 
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 11:35 PM
To: peel@yahoogroups.com 
Subject: Re: [peel] Audacity frustrations

  

Very kind of you Stuart- I will check this out tomorrow. However , in the meantime all is well - each time I started the tape the wave readings slipped down a panel so I thought nothing was going in when really the readings were there but due to so many stops and starts they were about 5 screens down if you know what I mean.



On Wednesday, November 6, 2013 11:26 PM, Stuart Brooks <stuartb@...> wrote:

  
Hi Karl

I did a search for Audacity For Idiots and came across this
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/tutorials.html
But that is for an earlier version.

The latest manual is available http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/ and within that is a beginners’ recording guide http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/record.html

The fact that it suddenly stopped working with nothing having changed, means that something might have been changed by accident, or something has broken, eg audio lead.

So it’s back to troubleshooting, e.g. can you hear the sound of the deck through the PC speakers, is there anything on side B, is the record button pressed on Audacity (the meters only move if it is), is the record level set high enough, is the correct input selected, and not muted in the Volume Control Panel, can you get the meters moving by recording What You Hear while playing something back using Windows Media Player.

My own settings within Audacity are:
On the 4 drop down menu buttons
Audio Host: WIndows Direct Sound
Output Device: Primary Sound Driver
Input Device: Line In (if not choose Analog Mix, failing that What You Hear but that needs all WIndows sounds to be turned off or these will be captured too.)
2 Stereo Input Channels
Software Playthrough (in Preferences) – off
Stuart


From: egdirdle2013@yahoo.com 
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 10:48 PM
To: peel@yahoogroups.com 
Subject: [peel] Audacity frustrations

  
Hi all 

Trying to record new tapes on Audacity but its driving me round the twist at the moment. I stopped Audacity after inputting Side 1 and now it simply won't monitor the sound waves running across even though the settings were the same. I've done everything to change them since. 

Now I can't remember what worked in the first place. Is there an Audacity for idiots web page somewhere ?