I have no idea what I am talking about. So disclaimer.
So I have been talking into my mic and it seems to start clipping before it even reaches the edges of the play thing. what gives?
For some reason it stops there instead of going towards the upper and lower edges. I dont understand what is going on. It doesnt do that with wasapi but wasapi is being weird so I started just using MME and bow it does this crap. Can anyone tell me what is wrong here?
It’s probably a bug in your sound card drivers.
If you’re using an “on board” sound card and you wish to record in mono, go to the Windows Sound control panel, and set the recording device to “mono”. That usually fixes the problem.
I have no idea what I am talking about. So disclaimer.
Nice screenshot! It clearly shows the problem.
Hopefully, switching Windows to 1-channel mono will fix the problem, but you can avoid the distortion by recording at a lower volume and then boosting after recording (with the Amplify effect).
You can also try Direct Sound (if you haven’t already) which is newer than MME and older than WASAPI.
FYI - You’re looking at "amplitude" or “volume” which is represented by the height of the waveform.
Frequency is the scientific/technical term for what we hear as pitch. Bass is low frequency and treble is high frequency. Frequency is measured in Hz (Hertz = cycles-per-second). If you zoom way-way in, in the horizontal/time direction you can sort-of see the frequency but real-world audio consists of many simultaneous frequencies and there are better ways of “analyzing” the frequency content. It’s the complex-combination of frequencies (harmonics & overtones) that make a guitar sound different from a trumpet when they both play the same note and it’s what makes two singers sound different when they sing the same song and the exact same notes.
If you tried to change the audio drivers (Try using the Primary Audio Driver or Windows Direct Sound)
-You could also try to increase the recording buffer and reduce the errors (It may sound technical but in this audacity manual they explain it well and step by step)
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/devices_preferences.html