Help! Can't record to my Macbook

[m.elliott.coleman]

I have a Casio Privia PX160 and I'm trying to record the audio (not MIDI) to my Macbook Pro 13". Unfortunately, I haven't been successful. At first, I tried connecting a simple male-to-male auxiliary cable from the headphone port in the Casio to the dual headphone/mic port in the computer. This kind of worked, but the cable ended up recording BOTH the sound of the piano and the ambient sounds in the room—I hadn't realized that the cable had a tiny built-in mic that was picking up sound!

 

I discovered online that because the Macbook Pro 13" has a dual headphone/mic port, it can be tricky to get the computer to recognize an external audio source. I read that I needed a TRRS (i.e., three-ring) aux cable to get the job done. Sadly, I tested the new cord today and it didn't record any audio at all—not the ambient sounds in the room nor the sounds of the piano—because my Macbook didn't recognize the Casio as an "external mic" like it was supposed to.

 

Any ideas?? The simple aux-to-aux approach really SHOULD work, so I'm reluctant to buy any new equipment (splitters, audio interfaces, etc).

[Joe Muscara]

What app are you using to record? There may be a place in the application to tell it what source to use.

 

Another option is to go to the Sound pane in System Preferences and select Line In. See the image (this is from El Capitan, but previous macOS versions are similar).