so I have been transfering cassettes to mp3 for sometime but recently I upgraded to Catalina. I after getting Audacity working on Catalina OS, I started back to transfering the cassettes and I have noticed a static line in the recording. The playback from the cassette in Audacitiy is fine, no distortions or static it is only in the mp3. I have checked my old transfers and they are fine so it seems to be related to the move to Catalina. I have also tried various cables, different USB ports, and adjusted some settings (even though I have not idea what I am doing) but not change in the recording.
I am using something called “reshow” cassette with a USB cable connection.
I have even switched all cell phones off to see if there was any chance this could be source.
I have checked this forum but could not find anything that fit my problem.
From your description it seems you are saying that playback of the recording in Audacity sounds fine, but the MP3 exported from Audacity has “static”? Perhaps it is distortion. During playback do your playback meters indicate overload? Are you raising the gain of the track?
thanks for the feedback, the “indicate overload” seems fine, it nevers runs in the red, I just did a test run. Also I just took the default gain values.
What is interesting, I just recorded it again, while playing and record, the sound is fine, not crackles or break. When I play back what I recorded ( to know where to edit), there are crackles and breaks. As a test, I exported as mp3 and it sounds just fine. I did not export before as the quality was not good and assumed the export would be same. Do you know if this is a Catalina issue?
sorry I cannot give an example of what I am hearing from the playback.
The audio level on your export is very low. After applying the Amplify effect I can hear some very low frequency “pulsing” with a period of about 0.1 second. I don’t hear any crackling.
In Audacity, go to the View menu and check “Show Clipping”. That will indicate for sure if there is any clipping in your recording. I doubt there is given how low the volume is on the exported clip.
It seems impossible that there would be “crackles and breaks” when playing back, but none on the exported clip.