Audacity Forum

Hey all, I've gone through a few of the other topics that kind of touch on this but couldn't really find a solution.

I record a podcast every week running Audacity with Vista and a generic USB mic. Everything has worked great over the last 6 weeks, but this week we recorded and when I went to edit it and play it back on Audacity the playback speed was twice as fast as it should be resulting in the now well known 'chipmunk' effect. Also, there are a hell of a lot of clicks and no gaps between words. I saw a suggestion that 'Smart Recording' may be on, but if I never enabled it, why would the settings change from one week to the next?

The truly odd thing is that we recorded 2 separate podcasts and we would pause recording to go out for a cigarette break during both recording sessions, the audio (on a new audio track in the same file) after the break was perfect both times. It's just the initial track that is absolutely screwy. If I slow the tempo by 20% is becomes somewhat possible to listen to, but still horrible quality. I don't think it's an issue of RAM or anything that I know of as I have restarted my computer and tried to listen to it at different times to no avail.

Does anyone know if this can be fixed or is it a lost cause? I can send an example of the sound if necessary, would hate to think those podcasts are virtually un-publishable.

<<<I saw a suggestion that 'Smart Recording' may be on, but if I never enabled it, why would the settings change from one week to the next?>>>

Mistakes, errors, and typos. I know I personally never strike any keys by accident while I'm speed typing, but you might. Do you know what the hot key combination for Smart Recording is?

Do you have Windows Update turned on? Ever have it interrupt something you're trying to do? So the computer is constantly changing whether you strike any keys or change any settings or not.


The symptoms are of a sound track that speeds up, but the second part of the same track plays normally. That's insanely valuable information. Most times we only get one messed up track and have to figure it out from there.

The direction of gaze is important here.

We know the way to get slow motion in a movie is to speed up or "overcrank" the movie camera. It's one of the things that's been standing in the way of universal acceptance of video cameras in the movies. They run at one speed.

One way to get a speeded up track is to slow down the computer during the performance capture. What could slow down your machine -- erratically?

You hit another danger signal. "It's been working perfectly for months and suddenly..."

Suddenly you filled up your hard drive and it wouldn't run at full speed any more. You regularly error check, clean out, and defragment, right?

Koz