Crackling Sound When Importing Audio

[Chainsaw]

Hi,

I’m using Audacity 3.3.3 on MacOS Ventura 13.4.1

I’ve been using Audacity for years and never had a problem, but this week I had to update my computer to fix a problem in another application and then had to update Audacity as the older version I was using stopped working on the new OS. This issue started after I updated Audacity.

I keep hearing a crackling sound over audio I’ve imported. These audio tracks sound fine when played in other programs such as itunes. This has happened with two different mp3 files and with an audacity file that I recorded in the older version I had before the update. I’ve tried changing the buffer rate and it didn’t help. The sample rate is the same for all of these files and matches the settings I have in Audacity.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Chainsaw]

Update: I came back to this post to add a sample clip so that people can hear what I’m dealing with, but when I exported the audio out of audacity as an mp3 there was no longer a crackling sound, even though I did nothing to the audio. It seems this is an issue that exists purely inside of audacity. I am stumped.

[billw58]

When you say you’ve adjusted the “buffer rate” do you mean this?

https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_playback.html#mac_buffer