The other day I was recording 20 minutes worth of audio. Today I finally had the chance to listen to it and the whole file is useless. The best way I can describe the sound is sped up (at least faster than it should be), distorted (constantly clipping sound), and a lot of the low end was missing (other frequencies seemed to be missing as well). I went to test the recording setup afterwards and it all seemed fine.
I’m going to test in the same venue again later this week, but I’m just curious as to why this one time the problem would occur. The only difference in the band setup was the bass player had a new bass. Any thoughts? I wasn’t running the main board, just the recording side of things.
I’m using Audacity on Windows 8.1. The recorded audio is running through a M-Track 2-channel USB Interface. Again, this seems like a one-time problem. The gain on the interface was super lower and things sounded good live (with headphones) through the M-Track.
My guess is that there was a problem with the USB connection that was causing data loss during the recording, but that is only a guess. If you could post a short sample in WAV format (see: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-post-an-audio-sample/29851/1) we may be able to say with a bit more certainty.
Wow, well messed up There’s no recovery from that.
I’d say that the sound card has not made proper connection to the computer. I used to see a similar thing frequently with another make of USB sound card - the solution was (which doesn’t help you now) to “safely remove hardware” (shut down and totally switch off/disconnect the sound card), then reconnect the sound card and allow the drivers to reload.
On some set-ups it seems to be more reliable to boot up the computer with the sound card connected, whereas on other set-ups it seems to be more reliable to boot the computer first, wait until it is fully booted, then attach the sound card. Sorry, I don’t know any “rule” about which will be best for your set-up, but if you find that one way is better than the other, ensure that you always do it in that order.
So it sounds like a data line (USB) issue then. Since then I’ve been doing testing on-site and I’ve haven’t had the same problem pop up. I think it’s going to drive me crazy.
There’s no recovery from that.