Audacity

[Fred Winterling (harbor1)]

Hi Sherry & Mark,
I don't have the Midi synth option in my drop down menu there either. My options are:Phone line,microphone,line in,cd/video line in,aux/line in,stero mix and audio mix. I selected stereo mix in preferrences, I think. Sherry, those screen shots may help me also. Thanks!
Fred

[Mark Walsen (markwa)]

Hi Fred,

'Stereo mix' works for me on my SB Live.

Cheers
-- Mark

[Fred Winterling (harbor1)]

Hi Mark,
I did not download "Lame" when I dowlloaded audacity. Now I can't get the website. All I get is Soundforge.net is for sale. Lame is necessary to export Mp3 files. Any idea how I can find that web site again? Thanks !
Fred

[Fred Winterling (harbor1)]

Hi Mark & Sherry,
I found it! It's not "soundforge" it's "sourceforge" .net
El Fredo

[Sherry Crann (sherry)]

Howdy,

Fred and Mark, from what you're telling me re. your drop-down options, along with what I see on mine, I think that Audacity automatically detects your sound card options and offers you choices in the drop-down menu based on your sound card capabilities. So, if Fred's card is different than mine, his drop-down options will be different.

I don't know how this would affect folks who have two or more sound cards in one machine. Perhaps it would take the "default" card?

Anyway, it's interesting to learn all this stuff, and I'm glad we could come up with a tool to hopefully help most MidiNotate users get audio recordings of their performances if they want!

ttfn,
Sherry

[Mark Walsen (markwa)]

Sherry,

Is Audacity capturing high-quality recordings from Composer for you?

Does this work for some MIDI devices that Composer plays to and not others?

Cheers
-- Mark

[Sherry Crann (sherry)]

Howdy Mark,

Yes and no http://www.notation.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif

I had responded in the "Saving audio for mix of GPO and non-GPO tracks" that I can't get it to capture GPO, but everything else I've tried (sound card default and soundfonts) seems to work fine. I tried using the "What You Hear" option, but that still only captured the soundfont, and not GPO - I thought that was weird.

I'm not sure why it won't record GPO, and I haven't looked at the "full documentation" to see if they have anything about device configuration. I haven't seen anything obvious in the menu items.

I'll have to take a look at the full docs and see if there's anything useful for this situation.

ttfn,
Sherry

[Mark Walsen (markwa)]

Hi Sherry,

The dropdown choices included "stereo mix", which I used after unsuccessfully using all of the other choices. There wasn't a "MIDI Synth" option nor "What Your Hear" option. I wonder if there is something more advanced in the SB Audigy card than my SB Live card that makes these other options available.

Cheers
-- Mark

[Sherry Crann (sherry)]

Howdy Mark,

Yes, I think that what appears to happen is that Audacity automatically detects the options on your sound card, and then gives you those options in the drop down list. I don't have "stereo mix" as one of my options, but I'm going to try playing around a bit with my sound card settings later and see what happens. I have to go practice bass right now though - yippee!

ttfn,
Sherry

[Fred Winterling (harbor1)]

Hi Sherry & Mark
Keep talking, maybe I'll learn something. So many programs and applications that look so promising, and none of them seems to have anyone on board that knows how to write a "users guide for dummies".
(Except for Mark... Thanks Mark, you must have seen me coming). If it wasn't for this forum, I wouldn't have a clue.
Fred

[Sherry Crann (sherry)]

Howdy Guys,

Happy day! I figured out why Audacity wasn't capturing my GPO performance - I didn't have the "What you Hear" setting checked in my sound card settings. Now Audacity is capturing everything just fine! I didn't hear any glitches, but I didn't have many instruments running together. I'll have to further test it with more instruments going.

ttfn,
Sherry

[Mark Walsen (markwa)]

Hi Sherry,

This sounds very promising, that Audacity is able to record a GPO performance without any glitches. Although GPO offers its own option for saving the playback as a .wav file, it suggests that Audacity is well-implemented if it can also save the playback without glitches.

Cheers
-- Mark

[Fred Winterling (harbor1)]

Hi Mark and Sherry,
Has anybody found a way to select a midi synth option. I don't think it is possible to get the noise out of it using Composer to sneak it in. Also, Sherry, what do use to record vocals with a background file for Mp3 & Wav? I was hoping to be able to use Audacity for that, but it's not looking too promising at the moment.
Fred

[Mark Walsen (markwa)]

Hello Fred,

I've had the same problem, that I cannot find the Midi Synth option in Audacity's list of sound sources. I find Stereo Mix as an option. But so far I'm getting choppy recordings. I'll try shutting down all programs on my system except Composer and Audacity, to see if that helps.

Sherry has had some good success. We need to figure out how to carry her success with Audacity and Composer over to our systems.

Cheers
-- Mark

[Fred Winterling (harbor1)]

Hi Mark,
Right! There must be something I am missing. I have been inside and out of my soundcard, making sure every option is checked. I've played with all the volumes, etc. but I can't get it to perform properly. I feel like there is some simple solution that I keep passing by. I don't have a microphone yet, but I wonder if that might work better since it would go directly through the soundcard?
Fred

[Sherry Crann (sherry)]

Hi guys,

A few quick notes here, then I have to run.

1. Be sure that your sound card selections within Windows is exactly what your Audacity drop-down source is. Vis a vis, when you click Start/Control Panel/Sounds and Audio (this is in XP), and then select your recording options, (eg. "What you hear" or "Midi synth"), be sure that you select the same item from the drop-down list in Audacity. That was the little item that threw me off the first time I tried a "mixed" recording.

2. Turn off everything that is running except Audacity and Composer when you try to record. Other programs, even just the printer in your tray at the bottom, can check to see if you've done something to "call" for them, and that can eat into your CPU and cause glitches. To do this, you can usually just right-click on the icon in the tray, and then click "Exit" for that program.

3. If you have the option, increase the buffer for your audio driver. I use the Asio4All driver, and I have my buffer size set at 512. This means that for midi devices (such as GPO) that use this driver, you need to set the buffer size to match. Higher buffer size means less drop-outs, but be careful as it can also affect latency, which can be an issue if you're using different sources at the same time (such as soundfonts and GPO together). You'll have to experiment with your setup to find your happy medium http://www.notation.com/discus/clipart/happy.gif

ttfn,
Sherry

[Fred Winterling (harbor1)]

HI Sherry,
Thanks for the tips. I'm about 90% there. I think disabling all the programs in the tool bar did the trick. There are still a lot of programs running that don't have icons in the tray I should shut down, and I think I need to experiment a little with the volume settings, but I can record now. When I try some vocals, I won't need to run Composer in the background, so that will eliminate another running program. That ought to be fun. I'll lay down the tracks in Composer and edit them, convert them to MP3 in Synthfont so I'll be able to hear the tracks in Audacity. Phew!
Fred