Hello,
I am in a desperate situation. I made a recording today on audacity. it was saying to adjust playback rate, or variable rate, something to that nature. I went and installed the most recent drivers thinking that was the issue. now it plays the recording but my microphone is not recording evenly in both channels. the right is lagging behind the left and now im getting annoying static in the playback that sounds horrible.
I can say I switched to a one channel mono recording and it still did it so the uneven recording is not the actual problem.
I can only think at this point it is my mic which is only about 6 months old and I have never touched it or moved it since I installed it. would a microphone just suddenly go bad like that?
I figured since I downloaded new drivers and recently did an upgrade on the computer I want to make sure I wasn’t over looking anything before I have to conclude the mic just spontaneously went bad.
please if anyone can help with this its appreciated.
thanks so much.
Noise is usually an analog problem but with the timing problems you are probably getting [u]dropouts[/u] which are related to multitasking. (If you are using an older version of Audacity it might not show the dropouts.)
This can be a tough problem… Your operating system is always multitasking even when you’re running only one application. Some other application/process/driver just has to “hog” the system for a few milliseconds too long and you get buffer overflow and a glitch. And, It doesn’t have to be using a lot of total CPU time to cause a problem.
Analog noise is usually “constant” and more noticeable during quiet or silent parts.
I have to conclude the mic just spontaneously went bad.
While that’s possible, it’s not very likely. Bad microphones can have volume problems or be muffled or just fail to work. They don’t suddenly start complaining about data settings or crackle.
What’s the microphone?
Windows has a nasty habit of seeming to force upgrades and changes and they’re not always benign.
Did you do a clean Windows shutdown anywhere in there? Shift + Shutdown instead of regular Shutdown or Restart. Wait a bit and Start.
Is the computer a laptop?
It’s good to know exactly what the machine was complaining about even if it doesn’t make any sense to you. You can use the Windows Snipping Tool to draw a box around the message and save it and/or post it on the forum.
Koz