Audacity versus sound card!!

[pelouk]

Hello,

Complete newbie both to Audacity and recording in general and have a problem that's stumped me. I have a Matrix K eternal sound card (usb) with a Samson CO3 mic all in use on my laptop running Vista.

The Matrix did not come with any CD and the manufacturer (CME) only supplies driver downloads for the FW version of the soundcard. If you have the usb version like me - well your on your own because there's no help from CME.

I've downloaded ASIO drivers, plugged everything, opened a new project track in Audacity for a voice test but when I press record, I get an error message reading:-

"Error while opening the sound device. Please check the input device settings and sample rates".

I don't know how to check the input device settings and sample rates (barely understand what that means!!) via Audacity. Since the sound card has no control panel (there was no installation CD) I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Can anyone help, please.

[Electriclight]

From memory, I think in the latest Audacity version it is Preferences> Audio Device. Something like that. I would look for the CME there and set the bit rate to 16 and sample rate to 44.1 for starters