Two minutes of the audio in my file has randomly been corrupted. It’s not unplayable, but the sound spikes and falls in such a way that voices can barely be understood, like talking into a fan. Of the entire half-hour file, only minutes 3 to 5 have been corrupted in this way. Are they recoverable?
When did that happen, and how did that happen?
Which version of Windows?
Which version of Audacity? (look in “Help menu > About Audacity”).
I’m running Audacity 2.0.2 and Windows 10. It happened yesterday night. As far as I can tell, nothing really went wrong. I saved the Audacity project, shut off my computer, rebooted it later, and a small amount of audio was randomly altered.
Do you know if it played OK yesterday?
Can you export this two minutes as WAV (not MP3) and post it online?
https://www.dropbox.com/
http://www.dropsend.com/
http://www.mailbigfile.com/
http://www.sendspace.com
Gale
As far as I know, it did not. However, the first time I played it back was after having restarted my computer.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2mmxbn51qfyi643/Improv1debug.wav?dl=0
The corruption starts at 2:44 and ends at 5:01.
The "talking into a fan"effect is what we call “skipping”. It happens during recording when some part of the computer system is struggling to keep up with the data being recorded. A common cause for this is running other applications at the same time, particularly applications that are either CPU intensive, or access the hard drive a lot. Automatic software updates are quite a common culprit.
The other major problem is that your recording level is too high, causing the recording to be hideously distorted in many places. To avoid this problem, set your recording level much lower - aim for a maximum peak level of about half the track height (about -6 dB). Also, avoid shouting directly into the microphone.
I see. Thank you so much for the help! I’ll definitely take steps to avoid this issue in the future.
With reference to possible causes of skipping, note that by default, Windows 10 Updates download and install automatically. See http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Windows_10_OS#Windows_Update for things you can do to prevent “forced updates”. However in my experience Windows Updates on Windows 10 do not tax the computer as much as they did on Windows Vista and 7.
If necessary there is an extensive list of causes of (and solutions for) skipping at http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Managing_Computer_Resources_and_Drivers.
Gale