Backing track speed is different in my player and Audacity

Question

I've recorded a guitar part from Yamaha THR 10x to Audacity. Thanks to the good folks who added THR drivers to Linux kernel. While recording the guitar, I played the backing track in Clementine player. The backing track is an mp3 file. I couldn't make Audacity record and play the imported backing track at the same time. If it can be done, please tell me how to do it?

Now after I finished recording the guitar track, I've imported the backing track to Audacity. Even though I could align both tracks at the beginning and everything looked fine, later there is some mismatch started between the guitar and drums after ~ 3 minutes. And it got worse and worse with time. The track is quite long, more than 8 minutes, so it is a real mess by the end. It seems that Clementine and Audacity play the backing track at slightly different speed. I don't know how this effect is called as I'm still learning how to play and record it. I am not sure whether the problem is in Clementine or Audacity.

The Clementine player was running on the same laptop on which I recorded. I tried to completely avoid using the laptop, and played the backing track from my phone connected to my amp via AUX cable but also noticed the same effect. The player I used on the phone is Shuttle.

What is the surefire way to play backing track at exact same speed as it is imported to Audacity? If possible, please suggest something for Linux or Android.

What player do you use while recording?

Answer 1

You need to use the same software for playing the backing track and recording your performance. Otherwise you will always have synchronization issues as the two softwares are not communicating and thus are not sharing a common reference.

To give an example, MIDI devices are staying synced at the same tempo by having a master device sending not less than 24 pulses per quarter note! Sending once the tempo value would not be precise enough considering that clocks are always drifting…

One simple way to do is to import your backing track in Audacity, and having it play while you are recording (first option).

You can also try to find a DAW with more capabilities on Linux. This is not the place for recommendation but I know by experience that there are pretty good and Ardent DAWs on Linux. If you have the courage to configure Jack, that is…