Crackling Noise heard in recordings

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

I have observed this problem for a while now and it is random as it stopped for a while but now it’s back. I’m using a 1/8 inch to RCA connector from my MacBook Pro headphone jack to my audio mixer so before I go and spend $$ on a new wire I thought I would look in this forum to see if anyone else is experiencing this and I see there are others and the only difference is my static is in audio recordings as I do not use Audacity to record spoken words.

Whats weird is the beginning of recordings are fine as the noise seems to appear around the 5 minute mark and is audiable until the end ( this case the snippet is from a file that is an hour recording of music.

Here are my specs
MacBook Pro mid 2010
OS 10.10.5

Audacity 2.1.3

SAMPLE OF NOISE IS IN MP3 FILE ATTACHED.

This is a serious problem as I have a show to do and I’m loosing time so before I re record I need to know what I can do. If you need to hear what exactly I’m referring to I can upload a short audio clip with the static. Plz advize R

2

That tells you it’s not a wiring problem.
Perhaps you’re running out of free memory after 5 minutes of recording,
or some sort of energy-saving mode is kicking-in after 5 minutes and interrupting Audacity thereafter.

3

Hmm seems to be something happening in my OBS ( I’m doing audio and video streaming) the search goes on. thx for reply

4

I, too have this issue. I usually get the first recording done without issue, but subsequent attempts are increasingly prone to static.

I’ve a similar generation Mac and Audacity software, so can relate well.
Otherwise, Audacity does everything I want. I was about to Donate for the software having tested it out, but this issue arose. I upgraded to the latest Audacity, but still have this problem.

Any resolution would be great!!

SKP

5

Looked at the suggested remedies from Audacity.
Tried halving the sampling rate to 16K - after all, it’s only going to be played on an MP3 iPod… to no avail. First vinyl transfer went well, but subsequent attempts ( a few hours later) have increasing amounts of ‘static’.
Pity, as I quite like the latest version - sorted out some of the earlier clumsy labelling issues, but if I am wasting a lot of time having to delete most of my recordings… I certainly won’t be paying for the program. Time to find something else to do the job!

skp

6

Try the suggestions here: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_recording_troubleshooting.html#mac_crackle
Particularly the first “Buffer Length” suggestion as that is quite a common cause of clicky recordings.