No audio data in recording buffer

Builder
1

OS (e.g. Win10): Win11 26200.9457
PsychoPy version (e.g. 2024.2.4 Py 3.8)

Hi all,

I’m sorry if this is a silly question with a simple fix- I’m operating through figuring PsychoPy out from the last 6 months of undergrad into beginning gradschool with no prior coding knowledge lol

In essense, I am doing a nonword experiment in which a participant hears a word, then repeats it (after an intiation tone). That repetition is recorded. The audio played and the microphone that is recording are both done through a pair of labheadphones (Sony WH-CH720).

I had this experiment working perfectly just last week under the 2026 1.1 version. Then after a windows update, I’m not sure why, but the entire experiment stopped working because no speaker could be found. There was a similar forum post reporting on this problem on Septembre 11th, in which I saw a developer suggested that downloading the new, 2026.2.4 version would fix the problen. I did just that, but now, there is no audio being recorded fro mthe headphones.

I am getting this error:

5.6859  WARNING     Attempted to unbind a Microphone object from a stream that it is not bound to.

5.6863  WARNING     No audio data in recording buffer.

10.1869     WARNING     Attempted to unbind a Microphone object from a stream that it is not bound to.

10.1871     WARNING     No audio data in recording buffer.

Essentially every time the mic has to record the new utterance, it just repeats this error. The experiment is still going, and successfully reaches the end. Its just that no audio is being recorded, and the data is empty. I am not sure what to do from here. I tried manually setting both the headphones and the mic up as hardware for a speaker and mic, but still, there’s no audio being recorded.

Any advice would be appreciated. I’ve been stuggling with figuring out a solution to this, as I had data collection scheduled for the near future before this issue started up!!!

2

Hi There,

You might need to configure your device manager in the latest release (info on that here), this wasn’t a feature in older PsychoPy releases, which would explain the change in behaviour in the latest release.

If you first use your device manager to specify the mic that should be used for recording, then in your microphone component → Device tab select that device - does that work?

It might be that by default the experiment was selecting a virtual mic (which didn’t pick up any audio).

Thanks!

Becca

3

Hi becca,

I tried changing the microphone hardware settings and this came up:

 PTB-INFO: New audio device 9 with handle 1 opened as PortAudio stream:
PTB-INFO: For 4 channels Capture: Audio subsystem is Windows WASAPI, Audio device name is Headset (WH-CH720N)
PTB-INFO: Real samplerate 48000.000000 Hz. Input latency 26.416667 msecs, Output latency 0.000000 msecs.

3.8413 	WARNING 	User requested fullscreen with size [1024  768], but screen is actually [1920, 1080]. Using actual size
6.2115 	WARNING 	Attempted to unbind a Microphone object from a stream that it is not bound to.
6.2116 	WARNING 	No audio data in recording buffer.
10.7116 	WARNING 	Attempted to unbind a Microphone object from a stream that it is not bound to.
10.7118 	WARNING 	No audio data in recording buffer.
15.2113 	WARNING 	Attempted to unbind a Microphone object from a stream that it is not bound to.

The experiment is still going on but its just not recording audio for every trial. The device is also still manually set in the device manager :frowning: I tried using an older version to see if the experiment would run like it did before but the entire experimet immediately crashes when I do that now.

4

Please may you show us some screenshots of how your device manager and microphone component are configured?

Just to check - you currently have two versions of PsychoPy installed is that correct? 2026.2.4 (latest) - where you have tried configuring device manager and 2026.1.1 where the experiment was previously built and ran but now crashes (after having been opened in 2026.2.4). When the experiment crashes are there any error messages? Or does the whole app shut down?

Thanks!

Becca

5

Hello,

Here are my current settings for the device and microphone components. These screenshots are both of the separate settings. Under routine settings, all speaker and mic components are directly set to refer to these hardware settings devices.

Screenshot 2026-10-02 122601
Screenshot 2026-10-02 1226011630×1071 74.5 KB

Screenshot 2026-10-02 122609
Screenshot 2026-10-02 1226091502×1056 65.5 KB

Also, to address yoru second question, I just downloaded the new PsychoPy 2026.2.4, which seems to have overridden the old version. Now, under Experiment settings>Use PsychoPy version, I am able to choose the older, PsychoPy 2026.1.1 manually.

When I try to use the 2026.1.1 version, the entire experiment crashes, and shows this error message:

 raise DeviceNotConnectedError(
psychopy.hardware.exceptions.DeviceNotConnectedError: No speaker device found with index 'None'

8.6104 	WARNING 	User requested fullscreen with size [1024  768], but screen is actually [1920, 1080]. Using actual size

13.6914 	WARNING 	Stopping key buffers but this could be dangerous ifother keyboards rely on the same.

In the latest version, the experiment doesn’t crash, it continues as normal but just doesn’t record audio because

6.2116 	WARNING 	No audio data in recording buffer.
10.7116 	WARNING 	Attempted to unbind a Microphone object from a stream that it is not bound to.

Last week, when I had the 2026.1.1 version, there were no isssues and audio was being recorded as per usual. Now, both versions are causing problems for me :frowning:

6

Sorry that this isn’t going smoothly. Looking into this right now, I’ll get back soon with any fixes