I just recorded the first episode of a podcast, and the first 25 minutes or so are smooth. I was able to level out the voices and do everything I needed to do to make it sound good. The issue that I have run into is that the last 25 minutes or so have a crackling whenever someone speaks. I have tried various methods of noise reduction, but because the crackling only occurs when someone is speaking it is difficult to find any sort of selection where I can show audacity that the crackling is what I want reduced. Has anyone ever run into this issue before? Is it possibly fixable without having to re-do the last 25 minutes of the podcast?
Fair warning that any sound that makes the Audacity sound meters go all the way up into the red zone and causes the blue waves to fill the space top to bottom is dead. That’s where the digital system “runs out of numbers” and stops making a good digital copy of the real thing. Even if you reduce the volume in post production, the damage is already burned in.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_recording_troubleshooting.html#clipping
But wait. There’s more.
Since the distortion happens at the end of your show (and since this is your first one), it’s possible your computer ran out of steam (resources, speed, etc), and once again, stopped accurately following the live show.
My Spidey Sense tells me you were recording a Skype transmission. Were you? Skype and Chat should be recorded with special software designed to do that (or two computers, the way I do it). Skype and Audacity don’t always get along well together and the show can become unstable.
And other reasons for holes and ticks in the show.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_recording_troubleshooting.html#skips
There’s also things you can do with the Buffer setting. this is called out in the above posting. You do have a special case because not all of your show went into the bin.
Drag-select a ten second portion of the distortion, Export WAV (Microsoft) and post it here. From an Audacity text window, scroll down to Upload Attachment > Browse.
I’m trying to explain why it happened and to prevent it from happening again, not rescue the show. That’s probably history.
Koz