First part of my audio is being cut off during recording

Audacity 3 Help Forum macOS
1

Hi there,

If you listen to the attachment you will see that the first section of each person speaking gets cut off at the first word. There are two people having a podcast conversation. Once a person starts to speak there are no issues with the recording. But when the conventions tos and fros there are parts where it cuts and jumps. I haven’t experienced this before with the audio equipment I am using. Has the file been destroyed or is there a way of cleanin it up so these cut off words/sections reappear.

Many thanks,
Cameron
Tommy N interview .aup (149 KB)

2

An “AUP” file is not an audio file, it is the part of an Audacity project that organises the audio data but does not itself contain any audio.
To post an audio sample to the forum, “Export” a short section (5 or 6 seconds is usually sufficient) as a WAV file. See here for more detail: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-post-an-audio-sample/29851/1

My guess from your description is that the Mac is trying to help you by “enhancing” the microphone input with some form of noise reduction. While that can be useful for Skype and similar, it’s terrible for recording, so all “sound enhancements” should be turned off. See here: FAQ:Recording - Troubleshooting - Audacity Manual

3

Hi, thanks for the prompt feedback.

I went into my Mac settings and unticked “use ambient noise reduction” in the sounds settings as advised in the link you shared. However this would have been ticked during my previous recording where I had no issue, so i am slightly unsold on this being the root cause. I have attached a 10sec exert in WAV form. Is there anyway I can rectify this file?

Many thanks,
Cameron

4

Me too now that I’ve heard it :wink:

I’m trying to guess what it ‘should’ sound like.
When you say “became a father to a … and // what’s your daughter’s name?”
what is the sound that I’ve indicated with “//” ?
Are there parts of the recording missing? I don’t just mean “quiet”, but “totally absent”?

5

This is a long shot, but could you go into the Transport menu and make sure that “Sound Activated Recording” is not checked?
– Bill

6

The first sections of words appear to be completely absent. If you look at the bubble or oval shaped waveform audio they are cut completely at the front of a word and don’t represent a typical shape of someone speaking a word. Pic attached.
Screen Shot 2017-04-19 at 8.03.22 AM.png

7

This is a long shot, but could you go into the Transport menu and make sure that “Sound Activated Recording” is not checked?

I was checked. If I uncheck it now I see it has no effect on the current audio file. Could this have disrupted the original audio file?

8

That would definitely have affected the recording. Leave it unchecked and try another recording and see if the problem goes away.

– Bill

9

Thanks Bill.

For future reference, why is that functionality there if it affects the recording?

10

Because some folk want/need it for surveillance-type recordings - they want to avoid taking up disk space with large amounts of silence.

WC

11

Many uses, including:

  • Dictation - avoid long silences while thinking.
  • Wildlife recording - recording animal / bird sounds without huge lengths of nothing.
  • Band rehearsals - record the songs but not the (relative) silence between songs
  • Environmental noise monitoring - how often do noisy trucks / planes / dogs / …
  • Audio note taking - ignore “thinking time” silences.
  • Recording streaming audio - by setting the threshold level extremely low, the recording will run continuously while there is an audio stream active, reducing the need to trim silences.
  • other…
12

Ok, I see. Thanks Bill.