Audacity stuttering on original recording

[Kent Wendler]

I have encountered a recurring problem which is very aggravating and sometimes even requires a restart to fix. Audacity records in a stutter instead of continuously. I would have attached a sample, but I get a "board attachment quota has been reached" message. I did a search of this board but didn't find anything which seemed to correspond.

The background: I use Audacity to do simple digitization of my analog (vinyl, tape) collection. I use a custom built machine using Win7 Pro (64 bit), w/ 2G ram & AMD quad core 2Ghz processor. The source is either a Audio Technica AT-PL120 turntable or Pioneer Elite CT-05D tape deck plugged into a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS Platinum Pro audio card. The sound comes through the speakers (also plugged into the Sound Blaster) just fine.

Tonight I started Audacity (installed using default settings) using sound activated recording, did a trial run, & it was fine on playback. So I deleted the track and restarted - and it immediately went into the stuttering mode.

Does anyone have a cause/cure for this?

Thanks in advance.

[steve]

There are some general tips here regarding this type of problem http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Troub ... ings#Skips
Given that you are using a relatively high spec computer my guess is that either you have bad sound card drivers or (more likely) another program is interfering with the recording.

Recording audio requires fast, continuous access to the hard drive. If anything gets in the way of that you will get stuttering.
Common causes of stuttering:

• Recording to a network drive rather than an internal hard drive.
• Anti-virus programs, either checking each .AU file as it is created or trying to do a system scan while you are recording.
• Windows update trying to install something
• e-mail programs checking for mail
• Other programs trying to update on-line
• Disk defragmentation program trying to defragment the drive.

This is not an exhaustive list, but check to see what programs are running (and running in the background) and shut down all that are non-essential.

[Kent Wendler]

I have to apologize - it does not seem to be an Audacity problem. Following the suggestion to try another sound editor I recorded using the Creative Wave Studio software that came with the Sound Blaster, and the same thing happened.

A better description is a regular series of normal waveforms of approx. 40 msec. in length interspersed with approximately 20 msec. of silence.

I'm also trying to get help from Creative, but it's an old product, transferred from my previous machine to my current one. I don't know if they will respond.

It used to work fine, but then started acting up increasingly beginning a few months ago.

[kozikowski]

I know you have a "new" machine, etc. etc. but how much room, exactly, do you have on your hard drive and when was the last time you error checked and defragmented? Audacity will not work into a fragmented drive or one that's too full.

Audio (and video) production programs are frequently the only ones that use all the memory. What are the chances you have a bad memory stick up in high memory?

Microsoft makes a delightful memory tester.

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Run multiple times.

Koz

[Kent Wendler]

I actually have 4 hard drives: The system drive (C:) has 515 Gb free out of 596 Gb, 0% fragmentation. There is an identical drive (K:) with only a single system backup file on it, not otherwise used. There are also two smaller hard drives (E: and F:) moved from my old machine for the old data but little used. I ran chkdsk last night on C: but found nothing.

As I write this now (with multiple applications open, including security & net connected) it recorded correctly. The difference? I changed the input from MME line in 2 to Windows DirectSound line in 2. Why this works is beyond my depth. I know little about Windows internals.

[Kent Wendler]

And last night, when I finally got back to trying again, Windows Direct Sound stuttered, but MME worked fine.

I am also getting a security warning that Audacity wants to change something (don't know what) on a hard drive, and it will only start if I permit it.