Recording cuts out after a pause

[mmedved]

We have Dell D620 laptops with XP operating system and Dynex microphones plugged in, that we are using Audacity to record oral conversations with. We had used them last year with out any problems. Now when we are using them they seem to start recording fine, but a number of times they will stop recording after there has been a short pause in the conversation of a few seconds. The track's recording line just goes to a straight line. Then once that happens it takes getting out of Audactiy and getting back in to enable the microphone to start recording the voices again. Any suggestion.

[steve]

Try upgrading to Audacity 1.3.11
Is the microphone USB?

[mmedved]

We are using 1.2.6. I didn't want to update to 1.3.11 since it was still a Beta version. How long has it been out there? The microphone is not a USB microphone. I have tried it with a USB microphone and had some problems, but was able to get it to recognize the USB microphone if I unplugged it and plugged it back in. I would like to stick with the microphone with the regular microphone plug since it is a better with reducing background noise.

[steve]

In spite of the name, Audacity 1.3.11 beta is more stable on many machines than the old 1.2.6 version. On Vista, Win 7 and the later Macs it is the "official" version to use. On Win XP it is less clear cut as 1.2.6 should work OK. 1.2.6 has been around unchanged for a long time (years) and is no longer being updated. Any problems arising from incompatibility with new hardware or software are no longer being fixed as all development work is now on the 1.3 version. 1.3.11 is a very mature beta version and has been going through extensive testing and bug fixing as required.

You don't need to uninstall 1.2.6 in order to use 1.3.11, they can happily coexist. The limitations of having both versions on your computer are a) you can only run one version at a time, and b) Audacity 1.2.6 can not open Audacity Projects that have been saved by the 1.3 version.

I can't think of any specific reason why you should get this problem, but upgrading to the later beta version (which has much better hardware support) will often make problems magically disappear. All of the forum helpers now use Audacity 1.3 and we all recommend it. There are a few operational differences with 1.3, but it is largely the same and it is now well documented (see links at top of page, or the links below my post).