Static on intermittent recordings

[Adam123]

I’m sorry for the generic title, or if asked and answered, but I hunted and can’t find it.

When I record with a Blue Yeti mic, sometimes the recording is fine, sometimes it records with interference. I cannot isolate a reason.

For what it is worth, the static is in the entire clip or the entire clip is fine. The static never seems to “appear” or go away in the middle of a clip.

Things I have tried:

1. Nothing plugged in (laptop on battery, only plugged into USB Yeti mic)
2. Messing with Realtek menu
3. Turning USB root hubs so they can’t sleep
4. Messing with menus (MME vs Windows WASAPI)
5. Allowing Windows sound mapper rather than forcing it to use Yeti
6. Turning mic switch “on” even though internal mic isn’t being used
7. Closing other applications
8. Delaying amount of time between recordings (vs back to back) in case there was a processor ramp-up issue
9. Different versions of audacity (2.4.2 and 3.7.1)

None of the above appear to make meaningful change. Sometimes there’s static. Sometimes it records fine. I can’t tell until replaying the recording.

I’ve used the on-board mic and I don’t know that I’ve been able to recreate the issue, so it seems the USB could be related, but I’ve used the same mic for podcast recording on another computer for years (including a quick test today) without problems so I don’t think it’s the mic itself.

Differences to between old and new laptops:

1. Old (Lenovo x1 carbon 6th generation) New (Framework 13, AMD)
2. Old (windows 10 pro) New (windows 11 pro)

Could be windows 10 / 11 change, but doesn’t seem to be fundamentally hardware, as sometimes it records fine.

Any guesses or hidden settings?

Thanks
Adam

[Adam123]

Update: It may be fixed with disabling ‘hardware acceleration of audio with this device’ as mentioned at https://neosmart.net/wiki/fixing-latency-and-delays-in-windows-audio-output/. That seems to be working at the moment. I’ll try to update back if the problem persists.