Chirping constructive feedback Death spiral

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

I was using Audacity 2.0.0 with Windows 7 64 bit Dell inspiron laptop and an Ion TTUSB05 turntable (USB connection) to turn my vynal records into mp3s. Everything was going fine for a day or two. Then, as soon as I opened a New project in Audacity and turned on the “Start Monitoring,” the green and red channels started pulsing and making a tock sound that built up quickly into loud chirps to the extent I had to disable the monitoring. When I try to record, the sound is badly distorted. Playback of previously recorded mp3 files works fine.

I uninstalled and reloaded Audacity and unhooked the turntable. It still happens. I’m dead in the water with no idea how to proceed. Thanks for any advice.

2

Somehow you have managed to create a feedback loop. I’m not sure how you’ve done that with a USB turntable, so let’s try a couple of tests.

Test 1
Turn off your computer.
Turn off your computer speakers, or if you were using the built-in laptop speakers, plug in headphones.
Disconnect the turntable.
Boot up the computer.
Open Audacity.
Carefully put on the headphones (but not if you can hear screaming feedback).
Scratch around on the laptop near the built-in microphone - can you hear that through the headphones?

Test 2
Turn off your computer.
Turn off your computer speakers, or if you were using the built-in laptop speakers, plug in headphones.
Connect the turntable.
Boot up the computer.
Open Audacity.
Carefully put on the headphones (but not if you can hear screaming feedback).
Scratch around on the laptop near the built-in microphone - can you hear that through the headphones?

If the answer to Test 2 is “no I can’t hear the microphone”, try recording.

3

Thanks. Your comment about the microphone got me to thinking. I went into Hardware & Sound and disabled the Recording device, which was the turntable. I no longer got the feedback problem. I then plugged in the turntable USB, reset it as the Recording device, and Audacity seems to be working. Not sure why this happened but the cure seems to follow the turn-it-off-turn-it-back-on law of computing fixes. :unamused: