Audio IO Preferences

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Audio I/O Preferences

Playback

Under the device selection box is an indicator of the audio library that Audacity is using, for example Portaudio v18 or Portaudio v19.

--add notes about alsa etc for Linux--

Play other tracks while recording new one: check to enable the feature where you can listen to audio on your PC whilst recording,
Software Playthrough: check so that a track being recorded is patched to output too. You probably will want to listen to the output via headphones.

Used to fine tune how previewing some edits to audio will sound

Play before: How much audio before the region that is being removed to play.
Play after: How much audio after the region that is being removed to play.

Audio to buffer: If you set this to 100ms the audio will take 0.1 seconds to travel through the sound card. If you decrease this value then recordings will be laid down with less delay and 'software playthrough' may respond faster. However, the CPU will have to work harder as it is taking the audio through the soundcard in smaller chunks. If you set this value too low for example to 1ms, then the CPU will not be able to keep up and recording won't work. 100ms is about right for most people.
Latency Correction: On most consumer systems there will be a delay between singing or hitting your note and it being laid down in the recording. By default Audacity will push recorded tracks backwards by 130 milliseconds to compensate for this, but you can adjust the correction value in this preference so that your recorded tracks should normally end up properly synchronised with the other tracks after the correction is applied.

Length of Preview: The length of audio to be played when previewing an effect, in seconds. Playback begins from the start of the selection region, and stops after the preview length has elapsed, or at the end of the selection region if that is shorter than the preview length.