Need Help Selecting Recording Device on Audacity

[ChristianFrancis]

Hey guys,

I'm starting out with LibriVox. Looking forward to getting my feet wet. Can someone please assist with my audacity setup? When i go to Edit, Preferences, and then click Recording, Device, I am having trouble finding my headset to select, as described in the directions. The brand of headset is Jabra; all I see is a bunch of random jargon. I tried selecting a couple at random and tried to record, but to no avail.

Thanks!!

-Christian

[TriciaG]

Did you plug in the mic before starting Audacity? If not, then Audacity won't "see" the mic.

You can either quit and restart Audacity, or go to Transport > Rescan Audio Devices.

(If you're a keyboard shortcut person, Shift-I will take you to the input devices, rather than having to go through all those menus.)

[ChristianFrancis]

Hi Tricia!!

I really appreciate your reply.

Unfortunately, I had plugged in the mic/headset before opening Audacity. Do you have any other ideas? There are a few dozen "device" options such as, pulse: Line 0, pulse: Mic:0, upmix, default: Line 0, default: CD:0, speexrate: Aux:0, Speexrate: Mix:0, etc. Is this normal to see all of these options? Sadly, I don't see Jabra.

Thanks again for the help.

[TriciaG]

No, that's not normal. Usually it's your built-in mic (if you have one) and your plugged in device, and that's it.

I don't have time now to research further; hopefully someone else will come along, or I'll get to it tomorrow.

[ChristianFrancis]

No worries. I appreciate your help. If you have time tomorrow, that'd be great!

[MaryAnnSpiegel]

Christian,

What type of operating system are you using?

I'm on Windows 10, and when I go to Settings | Sound | Input there is a drop down box that shows me all the microphone choices. I'm wondering if your Jabra shows up in that list. (And what else shows up in that list ...)

There should be a similar way to see what input devices your OS "sees" for other operating systems. Let's make sure your OS sees the Jabra before we move to Audacity.

MaryAnn

[Rapunzelina]

It might not come up with the name Jabra.
You can still test all the options and choose the one that sounds better.
Presumably you will be able to recognize which (if any) of the options is your Jabra microphone while testing (for example, record while moving the microphone closer and further away, and in the recording you should be able to hear the difference of the sound coming closer and going further away).
You can easily switch between microphone options from the Device Toolbar to do this testing (toolbars at the top of audacity). If it's not already, you can activate it from menu View -> Toolbars -> Device Toolbar.

[ChristianFrancis]

Mary Ann,

I am using a Chromebook. I had to download Linnux in order to download and run Audacity.

It looks like my device is recognizing the Jabra headset; I followed a similar process to which you described. I wonder if the Linnux is messing it up.


Rapunzelina,

I can try that. It would take some time, since there are like 30 random options, non of which seem promising; that might be a last resort.

[MaryAnnSpiegel]

It's odd that you see your mic as Jabra when you check your system settings, but not in the drop down menu for Audacity.

At the risk of sounding trite - have you rebooted? Maybe reinstall Audacity?

I've found this article on mic set ups, but no reference to Linnux. I'll keep looking.
https://www.musictoob.com/audacity-doesnt-recognize-the-microphone-heres-why/

MaryAnn

[MaryAnnSpiegel]

And these two, which are specific to Linux and is TOTALLY beyond me!

https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/USB_mic_on_Linux
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/495407/microphone-not-showing-up-in-audacity

MaryAnn

[ChristianFrancis]

Hi MarryAnn. I’ll check those articles. Much obliged! I might just need to get a real laptop.