audacity cutting in and out while recording??

[himynameiskyle]

i am using an hp G60 laptop with windows vista and a microphone purchased from radioshack.
Here is my dilemma:
i use audacity to record live performances of my band. before i got my laptop i used my parents' dell desktop computer with great results using the same microphone. the desktop computer was windows xp if that matters. basically, im running into problem with sound quality and im not sure if it has something to do with my sound card, bugs in windows vista, or if its my audacity preferences. what happens is i press record and then my band plays the song. when we're done playing, i'll press stop. then i press play. there is normal sound for about a second and then the volume starts cutting in and out and quickly reduces to almost no volume. also, when it gets quieter, it gets muffled sounding, so you cant hardly make anything out. this is aggravating because it does not always do this, sometimes i get great sounding recordings (about 8% of the time) so after we record and realize the sound cut off, we have to play the song again and hope that the next time will be part of 8% in which audacity works. occasionally, i will get an alert window saying "audacity has encountered a problem and needs to close" to which it closes and any unsaved material is lost. this actually happens quite frequently. about 25% of the time. also, when i record i dont have any other programs running.

[steve]

i press record and then my band plays the song. when we're done playing, i'll press stop. then i press play. there is normal sound for about a second and then the volume starts cutting in and out and quickly reduces to almost no volume.

That is a sound card issue and is common on many PC laptops.
There is usually a setting accessed from an icon near the clock that allows you to apply or disable microphone effects (may be called "noise reduction", AGC, "Automatic Gain Control" "feedback eliminator" ...various other names). You must disable all effects.

Note that these setting are often hidden and may require a lot of fiddling to find them. Some users have been unable to find these settings on their laptops, but I don't know if that is because they are not available, or they just have not found them.

Laptop PC's are also notorious for poor recording quality, even when you have those effects turned off. An external sound card is much recommended (or if you have a big budget you could get a Mac and a microphone pre-amp).

[himynameiskyle]

well, youre right, they are hard to find! but i opened up the sound menu and i saw a slide bar titled "microphone boost" it was set to +20 dB. i lowered to +10 dB and havent had a problem since... thanks!