Weird "limiting" recording problem

[BrotherD]

I just stumbled across a problem recording w/ Audacity, and I'm hoping someone out there might be able to shed some light on what I need to do to get things back on track. I'm using Audacity 1.2.6 on a Windows Vista machine, and I record using 2 microphones running into an M-Audio MobilePre USB mixer. I've attached an image to demonstrate my problem.



We've made no changes to our computer system since we've recorded last. The ONLY thing we've used the computer and microphones for was a Skype session that was recorded with PowerGramo, but that's never given us problems before.

Does anyone know why this "artificial limiter" is now turning up?

[kozikowski]

<<<Does anyone know why this "artificial limiter" is now turning up?>>>

I bet I got a good idea. Skype doesn't Play Well With Others and neither does Audacity. And then there's that other software package. Each one insists, absolutely, that they are going to reconfigure the computer sound services and to heck with everybody else. Skype in particular needs to do that to make phone calls work at all, plus there's that thing about Skype sharing your internet connection with everybody else.

Or didn't you know about that?

So try this. Restart the computer from power off. Unplug both the power cord and the network. Put the power cord back in and restart. No network. Run Audacity. Does it still do that?

Koz

[steve]

Another possibility is that the signal may be getting "limited" before it even gets to your computer.
Make sure that you don't have the gain set too high on the mixer.