Too much noise while recording on macbook

[kaesth]

Hi everyone,
this is my first post here, so i'm sorry if there are a bunch of similar questions here, but i can't find any exact solutions to my problem.

I've been recording voice using the internal mic on my macbook and audacity and usually the sound is ok, but lately there's been too much noise, and I can't seem to find the reason.

It's not the mic itself, because when i record using the photo booth or sth like that the sound is great. Also, when it's just voice I'm recording (1 track in audacity) it's fine, but when there are other tracks, like an instrumental then it gets 'noisy'. I guess it has something to do with processing, memory or whatever, but I can't undestand what i have to do to make it go away

I hope you have some answers because googling wasn't that helpful.

Thanks!!

Kae

[kozikowski]

<<<on my macbook>>>

Describe it. Memory? Processor? Apple > About This Computer. Read that.

Go > Computer > Control Click your system drive > Get Info > Read Capacity and Used.

Koz

[kaesth]

processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
memory 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
disk capacity 185.99 GB
available 36 GB


tnx Koz

[kozikowski]

OK, this is harder. Which OS-X and which version of Audacity exactly? Audacity > About.

I have to be careful not to project my concepts on the poster. I think of "noise" when I'm recording a voice as hiss, ssssss or shshshshshshs. Pink noise, white noise, whatever. Gentle rain in a forest. That's not what you have, is it?

If you're trying to sing to yourself, no doubt you have "Play other tracks while recording new one." checked, right? Probably also Hardware Playthrough or Software Playthrough? Are you wearing headphones? That's required when you overdub. Otherwise you end up recursively re-recording your older tracks.

Koz

[kozikowski]

If you tell me you're wearing headphones, you know I'm going to ask you for the model number, right?

Koz

[kaesth]

mac os x 10.5.2
audacity 1.2.6a

i'm not sure about what pink noise is.. but this one isn't gentle.. is more of a krkrkskkh noise smth like changing radio stations..

I actually tried variations of checking and unchecking "Play other tracks while recording new one", "Hardware Playthrough" and "Software Playthrough" and it doesn't go away.

I'm using headphones of course, they are pioneer earbuds...
Although, the thing is... when I just open a new file and record anything.. there's no noise, everything's great. So I don't think it has anything to do with earphones.

Thanks so much for being so thorough Koz, you're great for helping me!

[kozikowski]

Bingo. Leopard/Intel machines do not support Audacity 1.2.

Trash everything Audacity from /Applications folder and dig for the Preferences file.

Go > Home > Library > Applications Support > Take out the whole Audacity folder.

My favorite 1.3 version is 1.3.7. It seems to be stable for me over many different Intel Macs.

Audacity 1.3.7 -- Mac
http://audacity.googlecode.com/files/au ... -1.3.7.zip

Or you can go back up and pull down the latest general release.

http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_mac

Koz