Talk:How to set up Audacity
Discussion regarding Monitoring
- Peter 8Oct13: Fair point Bill. This section looks seriously misleading to me. I'm not sure I understand what is meant here by "hardware playthrough" (on Windows) - I've never seen an option for that on any of my Windows machines. The section needs reworking too as the "LineIn" software appears to be Mac OS/X only - we should give some windows options for other software alternatives. I haven't really got time right now to fix this so I have set a P2 to retain focus.
- Gale 11Oct13: Hardware playthrough means what it says there although it is not called that in the control panel. It means going to the playback side of Sounds and Audio Devices on XP and removing the mute for the input you want to record from. This is much less commonly found on Windows Vista and later. I've tried to improve it for Windows and Mac.
- Peter 11Oct13: But this surely is not monitoring in Audacity, rather it is playing the signal that will be sent to Audacity - or have I got this wrong?
- Gale 11Oct13: The old Audacity FAQ on the main site used to advocate hardware playthrough rather than software playthrough. That's where the text came from. Isn't hardware playthrough preferable if available? Suppose it's a low powered machine and the extra load with software playthrough causes the recording to have skips? Who is this tutorial for - solely recording from record/tape/MiniDisc? If so I suppose you could argue for putting hardware playthrough as an advanced option in a green div. The problem I see is not that hardware playthrough is bad, just that few modern machines have it.
And why doesn't Tutorial - Audacity Settings for Recording mention hardware playthrough at all, having said to turn software playthrough off if recording from a mic? I set a P2 for that.
- Peter 11Oct13: afaict this page solely forms part of the tutorial set Copying tapes, LPs or MiniDiscs to CDI don't think it's referenced from anywhere else. We can try a green advanced div - certainly none of the three PCs that I've had while an Audacity user have never has hardware playthrough, so for recording LPs and tapes I must rely on software playthrough, so for my money, the primary advice should be "Software Playthrough".
And yes possibly a fair point about Tutorial - Audacity Settings for Recording but once again maybe it should be in a green advanced div - but remember that that tutorial is aimed at rank beginners.
- Gale 11Oct13: Rank beginners are more likely to have OS hardware playthrough than a mixer ( the only other option suggested there).
- Peter 11Oct13: afaict this page solely forms part of the tutorial set Copying tapes, LPs or MiniDiscs to CDI don't think it's referenced from anywhere else. We can try a green advanced div - certainly none of the three PCs that I've had while an Audacity user have never has hardware playthrough, so for recording LPs and tapes I must rely on software playthrough, so for my money, the primary advice should be "Software Playthrough".
- Gale 11Oct13: This is Steve's comment for Linux
Most (?) modern Linux systems use ALSA and Pulse Audio with no playthrough module installed. There are optional playthrough modules for both ALSA and PulseAudio, though my experience of them has been that there is a lot of delay and can be problems with the sound breaking up. Hardware devices that have built in hardware playthrough (such as the Behringer UCA 202 or Zoom H2 USB audio devices) seem to "just work" for hardware playthrough - no user settings on the computer required. Linux systems that are set up specifically for music / media applications are likely to use Jack Audio System, in which case low latency software playthrough would normally be configured using QjackCtl connection panel.
- Peter 20Nov13: ToDo-2 Please review: I have strengthened the advice re h/w playthrough seldom working on Macs by encasing in an alert and I added in Steve's information on Linux playthrough and USB devices.
- Gale 20Nov13: I added links and grammar corrections for the Linux info. Hardware playthrough of an external mic configured in ALSAmixer does work on Ubuntu 13.10 on my netbook, but not on the laptop. I moved the USB info up into the hardware playthrough section. I think it's OK now.
