Win 10 and audio recording issues

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As I wrote, this blog will cover also other computer things than just plain security. And this is now one of those occasions, even before the actual content is produced. Did I already mention that life's weird?

So. I was going through my photo collection about a month ago. I found out one photo of a band where my friends played and I did sound to them. Year was 1999 or 2000. Those were the days... I sent the photo to the band and they were thrilled. One person asked if someone still had the recording of one particular gig. No one did. *sigh*

Yesterday we were cleaning our basement with my wife, and there was one box filled with C-cassettes. One cassette had a paper sheet with the magic words. So if the paper really described what the cassette included, this was just that gig! I started calling my friends if someone might still have a cassette player in working condition. And now I'm recording the cassette to my computer, and it really was the correct one. Weird timing! If I would have found out this cassette last year, I would have just put it back and forgot the whole thing.

There was also another cassette with the name of the band my dad played in the 70s. I called my dad and he told that during this autumn they had tried to digitize reel to reel tape recording of that same band, but the tape was destroyed before it could be even played. So...... :)

But, how is this related to computers?

I have ART USB Dual Pre which I'm using as a sound card when I'm doing sound gigs. It was quite inexpensive (about 100€ if I recall correctly) and doesn't require any specific drivers. And has also other nice features for the price tag.

I downloaded Audacity, connected ART box to my desktop computer, pressed record and got error. I checked bit rate things, tried different audio hosts (Windows DirectSound, MME, WASAPI). Tried to connect the box to the different USB port. Restarted Audacity, and so. All of the usual stuff. Nothing.

Still got the weird error "unanticipated host error 9999". So, finally I resulted to google it.

And found out this link: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/error_opening_sound_device.html


Windows 10 April 2018 Update resulting microphone problems

For some users Windows 10 is now blocking Audacity from using the microphone, on the basis of privacy settings.
After upgrading to version 1803, a small number of users have been reporting that the microphone is getting detected, but it doesn't pick up any sound.
In order to get around this issue, Microsoft recommends that you need to enable the microphone in your Privacy settings using these steps:

  1. Open Settings
  2. Click on Privacy
  3. Click on Microphone
  4. Turn on the Allow apps to access your microphone toggle switch.
And voilà! Required Audacity restart, but this was the reason. Who would have first thought that you can't record with professional USB mic pre because of Windows privacy settings....




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