Audacity Forum

My church is recording sermons using audacity, cause we are cool like that.

Recently, however, whenever we record, the file speeds up around 8 minutes until the end of the track (about 45 minutes). Everyone's voice sounds like chipmunks!

This error is new, and with no changes in settings on our end. To fix this, we have to go end at after each recording and MANUALLY change the speed and tempo to slow the recording back down.

This happens with both the original .aup and the exported mp3.

Any thoughts? I'm using version 1.2.6 on a Windows XP machine.

Nlacaria,

Perhaps you have a karaoke effect enabled in the laptop, either for recording or play-back?

Good luck.

no karaoke effect. not a laptop either.


the error does not occur until 8 minutes into the recording, so it can't be some sort of effect I have on the computer. it has to be an audacity software problem.

Have a look here: http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6680

There have been a spate of these problems recently - I'm wondering if there is some common denominator such as hardware. I doubt that it is Audacity, as the 1.2 version has been unchanged for ages, so it would not explain why suddenly there are several users with this problem, when it was not a problem until recently.

that's not the problem either. no change in hardware here. been using for audacity for a year+ each week, problem only occurred the past 3 weeks.

besides, i am only recording a single audio track.


could it be a resource issue? would audacity speed up due to not enough RAM/processor power being available to handle recording?

should I switch to 1.3.x and see if the problem goes away?

Probably unrelated--but on a Vista machine I had some mpeg clips run at "chipmunk" speed last week. No idea why, they were downloads & I just deleted them figuring they were made improperly. Still...chipmunks is chipmunks, no?

I have this problem too, SPECIFICALLY with single track recordings.

I got this response from Audacity (with my email to them first):
___________________________________________________________________
On Tue, December 16, 2008 10:44 pm, Steve Summers wrote:
> When editing an old record file previously made into an MP3, with a mono
> track, any editing at all, and saving with the same name or another name
> then exporting to an MP3 results in the tempo doubling.
>
> If the tempo is lengthened -halved- in Effects the music sounds tinny.
>
> This happens even if I first choose Mono in Preferences before importing
> the file.
>
> This doesn't happen if I export as a .wav

This is a known issue with many v3.98 copies of LAME encoders currently in
circulation (all the reports I have seen are for the Windows binary
lame_enc.dll). Please download the LAME binary (v.3.97) from:
http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/

or if you are on Windows and prefer v3.98:
http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/lame_enc.dll

If you have any questions, please use our Forum:
http://audacityteam.org/forum/
__________________________________________________________________

As it happens I use the lame version 3.97 downloaded from the site recommended.

You could try exporting as a .wav, just to get it done for the time being.

I have in one case not had this happen...not sure what I did different.


This an edit to my post:

On this Wikipedia site they give this solution...haven't looked into it yet.:

http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... s_too_fast

Exported MP3 plays too fast

If the MP3 plays at the wrong speed (usually too fast), then the sample rate you exported it at is unsuitable for your player application. Once again, the safe solution is to always set your Project Rate to 44100 Hz.