skips and clicks in recording

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hello Everyone

I have never posted on a forum before so I am sorry if I am a bother. I have started recording audio books recently so I am very new to a lot of this.
I am using Audacity version 2.4.2 and windows 10.

The first book I recorded everything went well. But now I am working on my second book and suddenly I am getting these skips and clicks in my recordings. Not in all of it though. I am using the same system as I did for the last book nothing has changed however the results are quite different. I thought that it might be because my Hard drive was not fast enough (same Hard Drive I used for the other book though) so I tried recording directly to the computer. But that did not fix the problem, there are still these odd clicks.

Does anyone have any idea what is causing them and can they be edited out?

2

Congratulations on getting your first book out! :smiley:

Can you verify that the clicks are in the recording and not in the playback? For example, do you see them on the waveform? Do they appear in exactly the same place every time you replay a phrase?

Usually when this happens, something has changed. :wink:

Curious… how did you do that?

There are others on the forum that can give you better direction than I with your clicks and with audiobook recording, but I know they will want to know which microphone you are using and which USB interface. Do you care to share that information?

For some inspiration while we are waiting for their help, do a forum search (upper right corner) on clicks. Here’s one: Clicks are driving me nuts!

3

Thank you for the well wishes!

And thank you for taking the time to respond to my plight. I have been reading everything I can about clicks and dropouts and I have tried all the suggestions.

You said that something has to be different to have different results! I know!!! But I have been racking my brain to figure out what could be different and the only thing that has changed is that I got a microphone stand, I don’t see how that could cause this but I may try going back to the table stand.

I tried to uninstall Audacity, and then I reinstalled the newest version. Tried recording and same thing, there will be several minutes of good recording and then a click and skip in the recording.

I also did maintenance on my computer, updates, defrag etc. I then turned off the wifi and tried to record. Same thing.


Yes it is in the recording, it is in the same place each time I listen to it and I can see it in the wave form.

I am using a Blue Yeti Microphone and the USB cord is plugged directly into the computer.

Screenshot (21).png

4

Here is another of these odd click sounds in the sound wave
Screenshot (22).png

5

Here is another.
Screenshot (23).png

6

Just to make sure it wasn’t the new microphone stand, I changed back the old one. Once again about 5 minutes into my recording there are again these clicks or spikes in the wavelink.

What is even more frustrating is that I haven’t even figured a way to edit them out for a temporary solution so I can finish the project I am working on. Cutting them out leaves it sounding weird.

Here is another recording with some screen shots of my latest recording with the old microphone stand.

Screenshot (25).png
Screenshot (27).png

7

Are you saying that the first 5 minutes are always OK?
Is that the first few minutes after booting up the computer, or the first few minutes after launching Audacity, or the first few minutes after pressing the record button?

What happens if you record for 4 minutes, then pause the recording for 10 minutes, then resume recording for 4 minutes?

Are you recording on a laptop computer?

8

Hello Steve

Thanks for trying to help me here.

Yes I am using a laptop it is an Acer Aspire E 15, 8th Gen Intel Core i3-8130U, 6GB RAM Memory, 1TB HDD,

The five minute reference is not exact, what mean is that after approximately five minutes of recorded material these skips, clicks or static whatever they are, will occur. Then after it skips a while it will then settle in a record several minutes more of perfectly fine audio. If it is a long chapter that I am recording then it often has two or three places where this occurs for approximately 30-45 seconds.

The last several times I recorded I made sure to boot the computer up fresh give it a minute to wake up and turn of wifi and then record with nothing else open or running.

9

Please post a short sample (just a few seconds) containing one or more of the clicks, in WAV format (Use “Export Selection”) so that we can look closely at the clicks. (See: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-post-an-audio-sample/29851/1)

10

I am using a laptop it is an Acer Aspire

Are you on “Shore Power,” are you plugged into the wall?

Do you have a little light on the top called HD, or Drive or something like that? That used to signify the machine is having to access the hard drive and it was a big deal if it happened too often or suddenly flashed violently for no good reason.

[Looking at illustration]

Do those keys light up, or are they just painted blue?

I’m racking my brain to think of a “five minute event.” I know that’s not exact, that’s just the name I’m giving it. From your analysis, that’s a collection of different errors. Those swoop and flat spots are some system turning on and off. The blobs of grass are actual noises that something is making and it’s not you.

First guess the system is recording your work to the hardware memory and then, when it starts to fill up, calls a halt, blows it all off to the hard drive, and starts over. That could absolutely happen on a five-minute interval, and the problem, of course, is your performance doesn’t stop. There is no “Hang on a second”. We’re watching data collision events.

I don’t think you ever said what the microphone was. It’s separate from the computer, right? Set the computer up for recording from the internal microphone and unplug your existing one (and tell us what it is).

See if it still does it. It’s most important if the problem stops, but it’s almost equally important if it changes. Is it worse? Does it sound different?

And just to cover it, do you use Skype, Zoom, etc? Do you have your machine set for Windows Auto Update?

Windows 10 has three different “start overs.” There’s Restart, Shutdown, and “This time I really mean it” Shift+Shutdown.

Shift+Shutdown cleans out a lot more things than the first two and takes longer. That’s the one to use when you’re having trouble.

Koz

11

Which virus software do you use?

I know you have a terabyte (TB) hard drive, so do I, but you’re at the end of an existing book production. Are you starting to fill it up?

Is it a solid-state drive? Does it say anywhere? If it is, they’re really fast and just do their thing and that’s the way it is (although you still should not fill one up).

If it’s older spinning metal (it doesn’t say “SSD” anywhere), then it’s a conventional drive and can take some maintenance efforts.

Koz

12

I know you want us to tell you “Push This Button,” but there is no history of what causes your problem. I’m extrapolating from your symptoms and knowing basically how computers do things.

Even worse, of course, you also have “This used to work and now it doesn’t.”

That puts you into the bookkeeping of what changed, and it’s more than you think. Windows does automated updates unless you tell it not to. Both Skype and Zoom make system sound changes without telling you. Just filling your your hard drive—not even full—changes how the machine acts. And etc. etc. Way down the list since you’re on Windows, you may no longer be the only user on your machine. I had this recently. I shut down my WiFi system and it didn’t go down. I was “sharing” it.

We have had successes. That frying mosquitoes noise a while back took a while to run down, but we can now give you chapter and verse what causes it, how to get rid of it, and we generated a plugin to get rid of it in post production processing (if it’s not too bad).

We don’t have any of that for your problem…yet.

Because of what it sounds like and how pervasive it is, it counts as a second performer and we can’t split a mixed song into individual performers. As I think you posted, you can’t remove them surgically without making the show sound funny.

This is where I trot out the 100% unpopular solution of stop recording on the computer. I prepared my technically correct audiobook submission on a stand-alone sound recorder parked on a roll of paper towels.

Koz

13

I know you want us to tell you “Push This Button,” but there is no history of what causes your problem. I’m extrapolating from your symptoms and knowing basically how computers do things.

Dont you wish those “easy button” comerercials were true! :cry:


This is where I trot out the 100% unpopular solution of stop recording on the computer. I prepared my technically correct audiobook submission on a stand-alone sound recorder parked on a roll of paper towels.

Wow! I didn’t know that was possible! I wish I had known that before I spent so much on a microphone! Hahaha!

14

Good news!

To those of you who helped me brain storm…A special thanks!

You encouraged me that it was the computer so I kept fiddling with it. I downloaded CCleaner and cleaned out all anything that I didn’t need. I might at that I have barely used this computer and so there is hardly anything saved to hard drive anyway. But I wanted to be on the safe side.

I defragmented it again and uninstalled and then reinstalled my antivirus ( I doubt this did anything but I was trying everything at this point)

I completely shut it down and started it again several times during this process.

Then I went to task manager and put Audacity as a high priority in the operating system.

Then I went on to Audacity-edit-preferences-devices, I then changed the Buffer length to 150 milliseconds (I saw this suggestion in the audacity manual)


I do not know which one of those things fixed it or if it was a combination of all of them but thank God its working again!

Thanks again for the suggestions and the moral support! :smiley: