Audacity Forum

Hi, i'm farelly new to this recording game and I just bought a Mic Mate to record vocals. When I'm recording I hear some kind of little sparks once and a while and it doesen't seems to be exactly my signing, since I've tried to sing softer or not too close of the mic and even tried the opposite and it dosen't change, it's not better, it's not worts.

I have a dynamique microphne directly plugged to the mic mate (since I juste got it I didn't bought the cable yet) could it be just that? I've tried it in Sound Recorder and it's the same deal but worst.

I use a old laptop PIII 800 and de usb is 1.0, could this old laptop just got problem processing the sound?

could it be my soundcard since I use a laptop?

It sounds like you are getting "glitches" due to your laptop failing to get the audio data and write it to disk fast enough.

A few things to try that may help:
Shut down all non-essential programs and processes, including Anti-virus (safest to disconnect from the internet first).
De-fragment your hard drive.
Make sure that you have DMA enabled for your hard drive (should be by default).
Make sure that you have at least 10% free space on your hard drive - preferably more.
Do not use any other USB devices at the same time.
Do not use a USB hub.
Try plugging into a different USB socket if there is one available.

Let us know how you get on (I'm also quite interested to hear how you get on with the Mic Mate - what the sound quality / noise level is like assuming you get it running smoothly).

I've tried the mic mate on a desktop and it sound great. But I had to put every volume level up so I could hear well but I check really fast since it wasn't my computer and I was more there for the glitches.

I think it's really my sound card or as you said it's maybe my laptop that can't prossess the information fast enought, but i'll tried what you told me and I'll let you know how that end up.

Thanks for the tips

PS: and if it's my soundcard what can I do if I want to keep working on my laptop?

You are not using your sound card for recording - only for playback.
An easy way to test if it is just the sound card messing up the sound on playback is to export the audio from Audacity as a 16 bit 44.1 kHz WAV file, and burn it as an audio CD, then play it back on a CD player. If the crackles have gone, then it is your soundcard. If the crackles are still there, then the problem is in the recording.

socratex wrote: and if it's my soundcard what can I do if I want to keep working on my laptop?

You can always buy an external USB soundcard - two that get recommended a lot are the Behringer UCA202 and the Edirol UA-1EX. The Behringer is cheaper - the Edirol has more features - both work well with Audacity. Stevethefiddle uses a UCA202 and I use the Edirol device - both of us get good results.

WC