Pop-free recording and 16/44.1kHz conversion

[pecksterism101]

I'm using Audacity 1.2.6 - I was hoping to use it to transfer audio tapes to CD, but ran into a few problems ...

1) Recording at 16 bit/44.1 kHz causes a few random pops and clicks, even if Audacity is the only app running. Increasing sample rate to 96kHz improves the situation but I still get typically 2 -3 random pops and clicks over a 5 minute period during recording.

2) Having recorded at 16/96kHz there seems to be no way to then export as 16/44.1 wav - have I missed something??? I managed to burn a CD by creating a playlist of wavs in iTunes and burning from there. Transferred OK, but of course with the original clicks and pops.

So is there anyway to record without pops and clicks - is this a bug in the software or is it my PC too slow? (Compaq Windows XP SP2 with all latest patches, 1.5 GHz Pentium, 896MB RAM).

[alatham]

Pops and clicks are generally indicative of hardware problems. In this case, it's certainly not your processor or RAM. The biggest culprit is probably your sound card.

If you've got a sound card built into your motherboard, I'm not surprised, those things suck. Especially since you've had better luck running at a different clock speed.

You should probably invest in new hardware, but if you can borrow a sound card from somebody else first that would be best. Either that or make sure you can return it if the problem still exists.

If you're interesting in getting new hardware anyway, the Behringer UCA202 doesn't get any complaints from people here, it's only $35. If you want to do better than that, the Edirol UA-1EX is recommended by one of our other forum members.