Audacity problems

(Audacity was working fine yesterday…)

Restarted the computer, brought up Audacity, pressed Record button…no cursor movement. (It’s supposed to (activate the screen and) start moving to the right)

Maybe this post can serve as a boiler plate for how to deal with problems like this, or just software in general.

(going from the bottom up in this thread…)

• Checked Record device, where you'll see the 'Speakers (loopback)':
• Problem #1: The Audio Setup button is frozen. Depressing this button doesn’t present either the Recording Device button or Playback Device button.

This is not the way software should work. It should do the same thing it did when it was Quit(ted).

Things that seem to work:

• All the menus seem to work. (I didn’t check each submenu item.) Active and inactive items seemed to be Plain or Dimmed Text
• The primary buttons ([Pause] [Play] [Record] )seem to work, but don’t activate the recording screen (my first hint something was awry).
• The Audacity Tools Toolbar tools seem to work.
• The Audacity Edit Toolbar seems to work.
• The Audacity Audio Setup Toolbar doesn’t work. Neither does its primary tool: Audio Setup.
• The Audacity Recording Meter Toolbar seemed functional.
• The Audacity Playback Meter Toolbar seemed functional.
• All the items at the bottom of the screen I believe would work if I could get Audacity Record/Play to work.
• The Help menu doesn’t help.

1. Is this a clear assessment of the problem and might it serve as a boilerplate way to check other programs’ snags?
2. It seems that getting the Audio Setup button to work is the first problem to pursue and solve.
3. Any advice?

If the menus work, you can go to Edit | Preferences and set the Host and Recording device in the Audio Settings category.

pseymour said:

If the menus work, you can go to Edit | Preferences and set the Host and Recording device in the Audio Settings category.

Click to expand...

The Preferences sub-menu is grayed out (inactive).

Do you have a track open that is not stopped? If you pause instead of stop, a lot of things are not available.

pseymour said:

Do you have a track open that is not stopped? If you pause instead of stop, a lot of things are not available.

Click to expand...

No, without the Record button functionality being available I can't create a track.

However, and this is interesting, I happen to have a track available I did last night, my friend the Black Phoebe, that I dragged onto the audacity screen and provided a track for me to work with (I'm not saying this should be the way to get Audacity to work). With this track in place I was able to use the Play button (and presumably other relevant tools and filters). However the Record button still was inactive and non-functional--I could not generate, or record, a new track.

antspants said:

Audacity Forum​

The Audacity Help Forum

forum.audacityteam.org

Click to expand...

As usual, thanks. I thought the program and its forum had gone inactive...