# Microphone component issues

**URL:** <https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/microphone-component-issues/24501>\
**Category:** Builder\
**Created:** [August 11, 2021, 12:16pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/microphone-component-issues/24501 "2021-08-11T12:16:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![lburin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/5fc32e/32.png) [@lburin](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/lburin)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2021, 12:16pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/microphone-component-issues/24501/1 "2021-08-11T12:16:44Z")

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**OS** (e.g. Win10): Win10 64bit  
**PsychoPy version** (e.g. 1.84.x): 2021.2.2  
**Standard Standalone? (y/n)** If not then what?: yes

Hi everyone,

I’ve been using PsychoPy for a couple of days only (+ a total beginner with Python) and I’m facing an issue that I can’t seem to be able to resolve despite having spent quite a lot of time on forums. I’m trying to build a fairly simple reading task in which a few sentences are randomly presented to subjects. Subjects are asked to read the sentences once they are presented to them. Everything seems to be working fine until I add the microphone component. I’ve tried to play with a bunch of different hardware and audio preferences\*, based on what I could read on forums and warning messages, but no success until now. I would really appreciate if anyone could give me some insights as to what the problem is and/or what I could do to fix it. Here’s the error I get :

Traceback (most recent call last):  
File “C:\Users\lburin\Desktop\TEST\test\_lastrun.py”, line 457, in   
mic.stop()  
File “C:\Users\lburin\AppData\Local\PsychoPy\lib\site-packages\psychopy\sound\microphone.py”, line 803, in stop  
“Cannot stop a stream that has not been started.”)  
psychopy.sound.exceptions.AudioStreamError: Cannot stop a stream that has not been started.

##### Experiment ended. ##### ![pref](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/psychopy/original/3X/f/2/f2e15db22869e2fc7593b68c0092ea0520adcf82.png)

\*I’ve moved PTB first in the Audiolib after I got some warning message, but also because if I get rid of it I can’t seem to be playing any soundfile (I need that for an another task, a repetition one, and for which I seem to have the same problem with the microphone component).

Best,

Léa

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**Author:** ![mdc](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/mdc/32/3409_2.png) [@mdc](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/mdc)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2021, 4:05pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/microphone-component-issues/24501/3 "2021-08-16T16:05:35Z")

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Thank you for reporting this issue. We currently investigating the cause of the error.

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**Author:** ![lburin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/5fc32e/32.png) [@lburin](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/lburin)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2021, 10:53am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/microphone-component-issues/24501/4 "2021-09-19T10:53:47Z")

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We’ve managed to fix the issue. The problem came from the fact that the stop duration for the microphone component shouldn’t be left blank!