I’m using Audacity version 2.4.2 with mac Mojave version 10.14.6. I’m attempting to record a voiceover for a song I filmed so that I can edit them together with better audio quality. For this purpose I’m using a Blue Yeti Nano which is traditionally connected to my computer through a USB hub, however in trying to sort out this problem I have also connected it at times straight into the port.
I’ve been using Audacity for recording my music for several years now, but today I had also opened Quicktime so that I could record video. I initially had the intention of recording the audio and video at the same time, but because I didn’t know how to make Quicktime only film video rather than video and audio, I got an error that the microphone was being used by two places at once, and quit Audacity so I could record the audio later. I say this because, although I hadn’t tested audacity for a couple weeks prior to this, it was at that time working fine with my microphone and setup so I have a feeling this error had something to do with the issue I’m now having.
When I record with either of my USB mics (I did try it out with a Shure Digital USB mic as well to confirm it wasn’t just my Yeti Nano) I get the error message: “Recorded audio was lost at the labeled locations. Possible causes: Other applications are competing with Audacity for processor time / You are saving directly to a slow external storage device.” It pops up with 4-10 dropped locations in just a 10 second recording with each test I’ve done and if you listen there are also low pitched cracking sounds above the audio even where the drops aren’t marked. As far as the possible causes, I am not saving to a slow external storage device and to test the former possible cause I went into System Preferences and disallowed every program other than Audacity from using the microphone, and it still had the issue. This is not the case when I switch Audacity to use the built in Macbook microphone however. In that case it records completely normally, with no drops or crack sounds.
I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling audacity, closing and opening it several times, switching out USB cables and the like, but so far nothing has worked.