Audacity often cuts off beginning of recording

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hi
I have for quite a while been using Audacity. Usually I am playing a teleconference replay on my ipad. While using my laptop with an external mic and audacity to record. Today’s recording was 1 hour 50 minutes. First 28 or so minutes was dead air space when I played back.

Regardless of the version (old or newer), While recording, I can see that it is working fine. The blue sound wave thingys show that it IS recording. Yet when the recording is done and I play it either through audacity or after exporting to my computer, the first 20 to 30 minutes of the recording is often dead air. Silence. Then I can hear the remainder which recorded perfectly. Sometimes I re-do the recording and it is okay the second time. Other times, no such luck. Occasionally the recording is fine the first time.

Does anyone have information or suggestions that might help? I am NOT literate in the use of Audacity. I just know how to start, stop, pause and export. So if your response is technical, I might need a bit more explanation than most folks. I am using 2.1.0. But as I said, the problem existed before I upgraded to that more recent version. Thanks, Pat

2

I have an idea what the problem might be. To test, please try the following:

Firstly, upgrade to the current version of Audacity (2.1.2) from here: http://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/
Does the problem still happen?

If that does not fix it, then try this:

  1. Open Audacity and save the empty project into your “Music”, “Documents” or “Desktop”.
  2. Make the recording. (the recorded data will now be written into the saved project rather than into the temp folder).
    Does that solve the problem?
3

Hi
Thanks for responding. Took a few days before I wanted to grapple with this. I updated to latest version of Audacity. Thanks for the link. I tried to save the empty project. But “save” was grayed out. So I chose “save as”. A box came up saying I cannot save an audio project. I had to use export. So I am trying that. I dont really understand how I can record from something blank exported to my desktop. But I will try. Thanks again. :smiley:

4

That’s the correct option (my bad, I should have been more explicit).

You misread that slightly.
The message is warning you that “saving a project” saves as an “Audacity project” - it does not create a normal audio file.
This message was added because many new users were trying to create normal audio files using the “Save” / “Save As” commands, when they should use the “Export Audio” command.

In you case you do want to save an “Audacity project”, so just click the “OK” button on that message and it will let you save the empty project.

Does that make sense now?