Adobe Audition does not let me record with several USB microphones at the same time.

[EZZETOR]

Hello, I tried to configure a set to make a podcast with USB microphones, the program detects them all but I have to set one as default.
When I try to assign the USB microphones to each channel to record simultaneously, only the microphone that I assigned as default appears, the rest of the microphones do not appear.

How should I do to be able to record all the microphones at the same time?

[emmrecs]

PC or Mac?

I'm almost certain that there is no way to have multiple USB mics all recognised and able to be used, one per multitrack track, on Windows. 

Whether it is possible with Mac I have no idea.  Hopefully a Mac user will be along to tell you!

[EZZETOR]

I have Windows

Surely you can't do something as basic as that in Audition?

[emmrecs · Accepted solution]

Windows, and hence Audition, can only see and use one USB mic at a time, so this is a limitation of Windows, not Audition.  Sorry!

To be able to use multiple mics,each feeding a different track, you really need "standard" (not USB) mics, feeding a suitable multi-channel audio interface connected to your computer, most often via a USB connection.

[EZZETOR]

Oh I understand.
As the OBS did detect all the microphones and allowed me to record and transmit from all at the same time I thought Auditon would too.
In any case, if you are really sure that you cannot be very grateful that you have taken the time to answer me.

Thank you very much.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

emmrecs is correct - you can't do this with multiple mics, although you can just about get away with two or at a pinch, three. The way you do this is to create an aggregated device by using ASIO4ALL - the only software that will do this, as far as I'm aware; good job it's free!

Now I suppose you want to know why it's such an issue, and I'll tell you. The problem with USB mics is that they all have their own digitisers built in, and it's inherently not possible to synchronise them to any outside source - the USB protocol simply doesn't allow for this. If you can't synchronise them, then when one gets a whole cycle out of step, there'll be an almighty 'click' in your recording that you won't be able to get rid of. What ASIO4ALL does is use one device as the 'master' and effectively resamples all of the others to it - or to any other available clock source. Whilst this works, it's a bad idea because you lose quality through resampling, and at any point where by chance they actually synchronise anyway, there's still likely to be a disturbance.

The best thing you can do is sell all of your multiple USB mics, get 'normal' ones and a multichannel interface. No problems at all then, as it's the interface that makes sure all the inputs are synchronised.

So just to be clear, this isn't an Audition restriction, it's a USB one.

[EZZETOR]

OK, thank you very much for your help.

[Mike Russell]

If you're using Mac launch Audio MIDI Setup and click the + button in the bottom left. Click "Create Agggregate Device" and add all your mics to it. Done!

You may also do this with third party software like, for instance, Loopback on the Mac.