Something very puzzling. Well, lots of things are puzzling, but the latest one is this.

I have a c-media usb mike. Start up audacity with it plugged in, and it records just fine. Play back the recording? Nothing. Play back another recorded track? Nothing.

Disconnect the mike, and try to play back? Error message.

Restart audacity? Now playback works, but recording does not. What appears to happen on attempting to record is that the track seems to be trying to playback through the mic. Well, this is my interpretation of what is visible and audible. What happens is that when you click record, the old track becomes audible through the headphones, and a new track appears to open under it in audacity, but it does not seem possible to record in it.

So the bottom line is that if you want to record and then play back, you have to do this: start out with the mike plugged in, do the recording, disconnect the mike, restart audacity, then play back. If you want to play back and record, you have to go the other way, once you've played back, you can no longer record. Or I cannot figure out how to, without restarting audacity.

The other puzzling thing is that krec does not seem to be able to record at all - or maybe this is me, I can't make it.

Am I doing something stupid here or does this sound like a bug in audacity or a configuration problem?

I have an external usb sound card, and the phenomenon seems to be the same whether using the onboard sound card or the external.

Peter