Sections of Audio Missing

I’m running Audacity 2.1.3 on Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6

I recently recorded a podcast with a friend, and going back to edit it I’m finding that sections of the audio are just missing. We were using a Scarlett Focusrite 2i2, and recorded directly into Audacity. The recording is a little over an hour long, and about 9 minutes in it appears almost as if some audio has been cut. It’s not suddenly silent either, it’s as if several seconds or minutes of speaking was altogether removed. This happens several times after this first instance too. One of us will be mid-sentence and suddenly we’re in the middle of a different sentence. Even the waveforms look like they were cut off mid-sound at these points. I haven’t done a lot of recording directly into Audacity, but I can’t imagine what could have caused this. Any help is greatly appreciated.

We need to be very clear what you did. You got to the end of the show and saved an Audacity Project (AUP), right? What exactly did you name it?

Did you save it to anywhere special? Desktop? How do you find it when you want to open it up for post production?

The 2i2 is a stereo device (two blue waves in Audacity-Speak). Did you use two microphones with the idea you were going to combine them later (perfectly rational, that’s how I do it).

Koz

I got to the end and saved the file as Doctor Zhivago Raw.aup. It’s saved in a folder on my Desktop, where I keep all my files for the show. I actually never closed Audacity after recording, I just saved the project. I recorded with two mics as a stereo track. Prior to having this 2i2, I was recording raw audio into a Zoom H4n, and then importing that audio into Audacity.

Honestly after doing some more digging it seems that this has some of the answers to my problem: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_recording_troubleshooting.html#How_can_I_record_without_small_skips_or_duplications.3F

I wasn’t even aware this skipping could occur. It’s also worth noting that I have not altered a single setting in Audacity, everything is at its default setting. I honestly might just go back to my old method. It adds an extra step but it never gave me problems. Is there any way I could have even detected the skipping during recording instead of waiting til playback?

Recording on a dedicated, stand-alone, high quality audio recorder is always recommended as opposed to struggling with computer recording problems.

But to be fair, it’s not supposed to do that. And it’s totally not supposed to “forget” major segments of the show. That sounds like the machine shut down for a time.

Is there any way I could have even detected the skipping during recording

I have without question, a very definite maybe. You can set Audacity to “simul-play” the current show back out to you during the performance—say on headphones. Audacity > Preferences > Recording: Playthrough (as many as you have). Sounds like a gift from the angels, right? It comes out “one computer late.” It’s not real time. If you’re the performer, you can’t do that, it will drive you nuts. But I expect that to drop dead during the failure times.

On further consideration, I bet the Audacity sound meters drop dead, too. I don’t use the default meters. I drag them the whole way across the screen so I can see them easily.

Koz