Hello, I am recording an audio book and encountering a strange error. Every so often, a tiny amount of input sound is dropped from the recording. For example, “child” sounds like “chld” or “Catholic” sounds like “atholic”. It’s not that a short silence is recorded, but that it sounds like I didn’t say the letter / sound at all.
I’m attaching a small sample that contains the issue. The word “happens” is getting partially lost. This is happening more than once per minute this morning though I haven’t heard this issue before.
I’m running audacity 3.7.6, macos 14.6.1, and it’s a beefy 8-core, 24 gb ram. I verified by watching cpu load in activity monitor during a recording session that none of the cores are stressed for cpu usage. I closed unneeded programs just in case, but the issue persists. I verified that “enable sound activationi recording” is off. I don’t believe I’ve installed any new software recently.
I’m recording to a AT2020USB-X attached over a usb-c cable. The cable and mic seem fine. I’m recording in mono. I tried all the plausible suggestions in the support page that discusses recording glitches.
Do you have any idea why this is happening and how I can resolve it? Thanks for your help.
So it doesn’t drop the time, just the actual sound. That’s probably not Sound Activated Recording. That just stops dead if it doesn’t get enough sound.
Do you use Skype, Zoom, or Google Meat? Do you leave them running in the background? You might want to restart the Mac before you perform again. Sometimes, those applications leave sound processing running even though you closed them.
This “error” is how Zoom gets rid of room echoes, noises, and feedback errors during an on-line conversation.
You may have another adjacent problem. Your sample sound is low volume and muffled.
@wrecks0 I verified sound activated recording was off.
@kozikowski I do not have any other programs running that record sound. Chrome could conceivably be recording but I wasn’t using it to do any audio-related work so I doubt that’s the culprit.
I wasn’t able to reproduce this problem when I tried using the system mic. Now when I switch back to the external mic I’m not able to reproduce it again either.
I’m attaching the sound sample as you requested. I produced it with the external mic which I used in the initial sample I provided.
Have you done any voice work? Is this a book you wrote? The forum gets requests for help from people that have been hired by the author to read the work. The Three Sisters Problem comes up when the performer is new at it, has never seen the text before, and can’t get the microphone to work right.
I can make this worse. You have a deadline.
It’s one Catskill.
I predict (pressing fingers to forehead) that you are going to get to the end of the book with weeks of presentation experience behind you, and the beginning and end of the book don’t match. One of the ACX requirements (if that’s who you’re using) is the need for everything to match.
Don’t second guess the diagnostics. Do you absolutely guarantee that another application isn’t causing problems? I know “restarting the machine” is a standing joke, but there’s nothing quite like clearing the machine as a good start.
Be happy you’re not on Windows. They have a very serious process to make sure the machine is clean. Regular Restart doesn’t do it.
I recorded the text that you sent me in the link, about the dairy farm. The instructions did not mention the quality of speaking needed. If you need me to read it again a certain way, I can do that.
Whether I’m reading a book, use ACX, or have deadlines are not relevant. I have an audio problem where occasionally short snippets of audio are lost, and I would like to understand why and resolve it.
No other application was interacting with audio at the time of my recording.
Restarting isn’t satisfying because I need to know what’s causing the problem and have confidence that I can prevent it from occurring again. Otherwise the problem may come back in a week or two and cause wasted effort.
What else might be causing this? Have you heard of this issue happening before? I haven’t found any other forum posts on this exact trouble.
I can update the instructions to be clearer about that.
When we receive your test, I’m going to apply audiobook production tools and do an ACX evaluation. If everything works OK, I will have a sound file that passes ACX Submission Standards.
So yes, I’m depending on you to announce like you mean it. If that passes, then the only problems left will be theatrical or audio quality.
But it could be. Audacity has tools specifically oriented to ACX audiobooks. That and there are tricks to it. For one significant example, ACX will not accept the whole book at once. You have to submit chapters. Scan around the forum for people “losing” massive book-long sound files. Chapter by chapter is super desirable.
There’s another more serious problem. Audacity can’t be used for Surveillance, Law Enforcement, or Conflict Resolution. You’re not doing any of those are you?
I do know that Zoom and its cousins do things like this to allow clean, multi-customer, live conversations. That’s why the first step is get rid of all other applications whether or not you think they’re causing problems.
I can think of an evaluation test. Announce at a normal volume and slowly back away and reduce your voice volume. A normal microphone system should record the whole thing. If you get to a particular distance or volume and the recording abruptly cuts out, then the problem is still there. Wear good headphones for the evaluation.
Wearing good headphones during the performance is a terrific idea anyway. That helps you maintain even voice volume.
I had a problem just like this when I first started recording audio. Was driving me crazy until I learned how to set my noise gate properly. I didn’t even know my Audio Device was using one! Threshold and Attack were the adjustments I had to make. Also, proper mic technique.
Of course if you not using a gate, then this is not it.
We are warned that ACX hates any evidence that you are using tools that can migrate your voice away from plain, ordinary, and clean. Having dead quiet between words or sentences will cause you to fail the Audacity ACX-Check diagnostic, and usually the ACX on-line checker as well.
Its super easy to go from a velvety quiet background performance to slicing off beginnings and endings of words by accident. ACX hates distractions like that. We note the Audacity Noise Reduction Effect default settings will gently reduce noise without trying to smash it to zero. Nobody can hear it working.
Maybe that shouldn’t be an afterthought. I shot a voice test in my quiet, echo-free bedroom using Lossless Voice Memo on my phone. I applied the Mastering Macro tool and the clip passes ACX Audiobook Submission Standards. Koz
Thanks everyone for your replies. I just encountered the error again after doing a restart and opening only the necessary applications - audacity and a PDF reader, a spinoff of Firefox called Librewolf. There aren’t any extensions or plugins related to audio (just one for ad-blocking). The PDF was the only thing open in the browser. I was working offline. So that narrows things down.
I haven’t set up any audio filters or gates. It was mid-sentence in a long take that hadn’t had any troubles in several minutes of recording. The previous day I recorded probably around 45 minutes with no trouble at all, so it’s quite inconsistent and hard to reproduce.
I was focusing on staying a consistent distance and orientation relative to the mic, so I don’t think that was it.
I will do the “slowly back away” experiment and let you know what I find.
None of the software and interference solutions have worked so far and multiple forum elves are not riding to your rescue. The fading voice volume test revealed nothing. I think your computer is broken—or worse, intermittently broken. I predict you will never get a book out the door.
See if you can borrow your mum’s computer if only to make sure it works. Audacity is free.
Also see: recording on your phone. Which phone do you have? If it’s an iPhone, then it’s easy. Settings > Voice Memos > Audio Quality = Lossless.
Desktop > Utilities > Voice Memos > All Recordings > Red Button Record.
Transfer the files to your computer for editing. I have a cable for this. Make sure you can do this step because Apple changes the connections around.
If you have some other phone, then you need to dig in your instructions. Avoid recorders that only record in MP3. Even though ACX requires chapter submissions in MP3, you can’t shoot them that way. MP3 intentionally produces distortion, it gets worse when you edit, and you can’t stop it.
Intermittently broken is definitely the worst kind of broken.
I’m using a 2023 macbook air with the latest 14.6.x OS. It really doesn’t seem like it should be a problem. But I think it’s a good idea to test with the phone, especially if I can plug in my nice microphone. Thanks for the suggestion.
I just found another glitch on this laptop from recording earlier this morning, uploading here in case it’s helpful later. I’ll let you know how it goes with the phone.
That’s a microphone maker’s trap. Everybody Knows you need to use our microphone to produce a winning audiobook. Other microphones need not apply.
There are some interesting problems with using a laptop microphone for production, but not so the phone.
The illustration in these posts is the phone positioned so the microphone in its bottom is pointed toward me.
Having the phone flat on the desk is not a mistake. That’s Pressure Zone Configuration. There are commercial microphones that work this way. It halves the electronic noise and doubles the good quality volume. It does depend on you having a quiet, echo-free recording room and a quiet desk.
The ACX goal is a voice recording that sounds like you. My voice test does sound like me.
There is a currently missing illustration that shows the phone plugged into its charging brick for extended recording time.
