crackling -begins during recording

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

Hello,

i’m using audacity to record my vinyl collection. Out of the blue, recordings have started picking up a crackle. monitoring the audio via speakers from the amp I cannot hear any crackle, but it goes on to the recording. I have attached a sample that shows where the crackling starts. I am on El Capitan, using audacity 2 .0 .5. The technics deck goes through a preamp into a Sony amp then via phonos to a phono to minijack adapter and into the back of my Mac mini. The cable does not cross anything electrical. if i disconnect then reconnect the minijack I can clear the problem temporarily but it returns within a couple of songs. Does anybody have any pointers how I can stop this happening?

2

The usual workarounds are to greatly reduce “Audio to Buffer” in Audacity’s Recording Preferences, turn off WiFi, or Prevent AppNap (right-click or control-click the audacity.app then “Get Info”).


Gale

3

Thanks Gale.

Reducing “Audio to buffer” by ten times does seem to have sorted it. I had read the FAQ, but as I wasn’t monitoring output after the Mac, I didn’t think this was relevant to me.

4

OK. I added a FAQ for the next release “How can I prevent clicky recordings on Mac OS X?”.


Gale