Hey DPRK, can Audacity add this as a separate simultaneous recording input along with another audio interface?
This is a theoretical question since I don’t use Audacity for music production work anyway: just wondering how much could be done with absolutely minimal equipment…
I have had to use VB-Cable and occasionally JACK when things did not work “out of the box”. However that, too, may be antiquated intel as I now almost always do, and recommend to, just use Linux.
I can forward specific technical questions concerning Windows to a friend who uses it for various reasons (e.g., vvvv does not work or is a PITA to get working under Linux).
Nope (unless they have upgraded something), which means you have to create a virtual device using VB-Cable/VB-Banana with however many channels and select that as an input in Audacity. Even under Linux this can be annoying using Jack as opposed to Pipewire.
ETA also the Audacity page points out that
Audacity supports ASIO but that support is not distributed in releases for licensing reasons.
and you may need that…
It’s an old iPad that has a headphone jack. I am going from the headphone jack split to two 1/4" plugs into two sides of a stereo track input.
Thanks. I think we’re in danger of going down a rather specialised technical rathole here which probably doesn’t help the OP who seems to want a simple solution, so we should probably get back to the original question!
Not on Windows, and probably not successfully on Mac.
The issue is clock synchronization and driver exclusivity. Very few audio interfaces at the cheap end of the market have external clock synchronization, and so audio from multiple interfaces will get out of sync. This may or may not cause sound degradation or phasing.
On Windows, an Audio device interface called ASIO is preferred to minimize latency. ASIO drivers are exclusive and unitary - there can be only one per process. So Ableton Live can only configure one ASIO interface for multi-channel input. Windows audio drivers come in various flavors ( MME, WASAPI, and WDM) but are not suitable for real-time recording/playback. There are wrappers (ASIO4ALL is commonly promoted) that provide an ASIO driver interface for a standard Windows audio driver - this can work if the driver is well written, but more often leads to frustration and poor results. There are also interface aggregators/routers like the VB-Audio tools mentioned above - again, they can work well, but they are complex and do not work in every case. I have never had any real success with those tools, but I didn’t try particularly hard. If my 2005-era FireWire interfaces had worked on Windows 10, I would have definitely tried much harder to make VB-Audio work.
On Apple OSes, CoreAudio can do a better job of aggregating multiple interfaces and working with a DAW, but clock synchronization is still an issue.
Unfortunately it seems that the DAW versions which come bundled with most interfaces are ‘lite’ or ‘starter’ versions which have limited functionality. Bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here: how do you find a DAW which suits your work pattern without trying the real thing?
That’s rather why I like Reaper: you can try it out indefinitely for free, and the license is on an honor basis.
Though I’m quite happy to pay the $60 personal license for a good piece of software.
There was, until recently, a completely free full-featured DAW available: Cakewalk by bandlab. (Which was originally derived from a commercial product, Sonar). But it seems they are discontinuing support for this and going back to a paid product. Can’t say I’m surprised, I never understood the business model of why they gave it away at all?
DAW selection may have been discussed in another thread… anyway there is a “free” version of Tracktion, have never tried it, though. Ardour is free, but you have to compile it yourself or pay for a pre-built version. Last time I did multi-track recording I actually used Bitwig (not free [there is a 30-day demo license if you just want to try it; I had access to a legitimate paid version though]).
Definitely, the “lite” versions are going to be limited.
But, if the OP wants to replicate functionality they’re used to having in Audacity, any of those lite versions will more than cover it.