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Arlen Holder Arlen   Holder is offline
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Default Typical first pass tutorial process on Windows 10 where NONE of the extent how to articles actually tell you what you really need to do!

On Wed, 4 Nov 2020 14:01:17 +0000 (UTC), Nicodemus wrote:

I have no microphone, was simply watching a youtube video and launched
Audacity and hit the record button, then stopped recording and then saved
as .mp3. On a Linum Mint desktop.


Hi Nicodemus,

I completely understand your experience, since it naturally "just works"
for you by default (and I had "thought" it would just work for me too!).

I too had figured it would only take a couple of minutes, instead of an
hour (although documentation always takes a lot longer than just doing it).

The problem is the "if then else" setup questions which need to be part of
any decent tutorial, and which were not part of any tutorial that I found.

What's not intuitive is that the latest versions of Windows 10, by default,
disable the microphone, which, given neither of us _have_ a microphone,
you'd "think" wouldn't matter.

Even those these later versions of Windows 10 also disable any app to have
access to that microphone - again, you'd "think" that wouldn't matter.

And yet it does matter.
o Win+R ms-settingsrivacy-microphone

Worse, other gotchas "may" matter, such as:
o Does the person have only an integrated sound card
o Do they need a 1/8th-inch M:M greenink loopback mic-to-speaker jumper
o Do we need to install LAME/FFMPEG anymore (the answer is no!)
etc.

Confusingly, some tutorials said to set the "Host" but they conflicted:
Audacity:Edit Preferences Devices Host:
o [MME])
o [Windows WASAPI]
Where, I must confess, I don't even know what those letters mean!

In summary, a good tutorial needs to add a few "tests" up front:
a. Is the recording apparatus working (even sans microphone)?
b. Does the integrated sound card or PCI extension card record audio?
c. Is a male-to-male 1/8th-inch loopback jumper needed?

What would be nice is if the team could supply those tests.
o That way, the _next_ person has an easier time (which is always the goal)
--
Part of the high cost of freeware is in figuring out how to use it.