Cracking sound like a bad broken record by playback

Audacity 3 Help Forum macOS
1

I have used audacity for years on a MacBook Air.
I import mp3 acoustic music and then record singing with it using seperate mic and focusrite.

After not using it for 6 months I tried it again.

While recording my voice i could hardly hear my voice in my headphone. But sang the song and unplugged the mic and focusrite as i always did.

So now I have so loud cracking when I play it on my macbook like an old bad record.

I have installed the newer audacity and loud cracking. So I reinstalled the old version 2.4.2 and the same loud cracking. Restart my macbook a few times …. I have tried a new downloaded mp3 …still the same.

I have set the rating to 44100.

Still very loud cracking.

I am desperate :worried:. Can someone give me advice on What to do ?

I have Monterey 12.7.6 on my macbook.

2

First, try reinstalling the sound drivers.

3

How do I do that ?

I have changed my MacBook to an older version ( the one before monterey ) and there audacity works fine. But if i go to the newer monterey then I can play from YouTube on my Mac without audacity and it sounds fine. But if i load it into audacity then it is cracking very loud.

So reinstalling audacity does not help. It must be something within audacity since music without audacity works fine.
What now ? Are there drivers from audacity that I can reinstall ? And where do I find them ?

4

“Re-installing” Audacity does not overwrite any broken settings you may have made for Audacity.

While Audacity is not running:
In the Finder, select the menu item “Go to folder” (Shift + Command + G) and paste this into the dialog:
~/Library/Application Support/
then press the enter key.

There is a folder called “audacity” which contains every setting etc. you have made, drag this folder to a different location (desktop, for example). Audacity will re-create the folder with it’s standard settings when it is started again. Try whether it is still cracking.

You have never used macOS, have you?

5

I did What you told me and it works !!!
Thank you very much for your help ! :pray::pray::pray:
I really have no idea What i did but the problem is fixed :joy:

I always had Windows but when I bought iPhone pro and iPad Pro the seller told me to also buy a MacBook so I did. But you are so right I do not know much about macOS :wink:

1 Like
6

This comment was in the direction of the person who recommended to “re-install sound drivers”.

And in fact, Audacity’s method to store the settings separately also applies to Windows and to Linux. However, I would have to look up the exact path of these files. My best guess is to enter %appdata% in the file explorer and then search from there for the “audacity” folder.