Chopped up audio

Hi - I am having trouble with recording audio using Audacity on my Mac laptops. On both laptops I am running OS X 10.10.3 and Audacity 2.1. This problem has been in place across earlier versions of both Audacity and OS X.

what happens is that if I record a long program, after a certain amount of time, the recording becomes choppy with a ticking sound in it. What is odd is that on my MacBook Air 11" it will happen after approximately 90 minutes (give or take a few). On my newer MacBook Pro Retina 13", it happens after about 30 minutes.

Has anyone run into this before? Is there a solution?

I am trying to record a long program (around 4.5 hours) and will then export it to MP3 in smaller chunks. Now, I have to make separate recordings in Audacity for each hour or so which makes the total process more labor intensive.

Any thoughts?

Has anyone run into this before?

Yes, but nobody’s sure exactly what the cause is. Does it slowly get worse and worse, or at one magic time it loses its mind?

Post some of the damaged sound on the forum. Or, if you have a hosting service, point us to it.

https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-post-an-audio-sample/29851/1

Koz