Audacity Forum

I have adjusted my quality settings to the minimum, disabled the real time waveform display, reinstalled sound card drivers, cleaned all viruses and adware, defragged my hard drive, cleared a lot of space on my hard drive, and set audacity to a real-time priority in task manager and no matter what I cant seem to record in audacity without skipping ever 10 seconds. Anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this problem or what could even be the source of the problem. My computer was recording fine until a few days ago so I have no idea where this came from.

thanks in advance for your replies.

Sounds as if you have tried a lot but how about telling the anti-virus program not to scan in Audacity's temporary directory? See Edit > Preferences: Directories to find where that is.

Other things you can try here:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Manag ... nd_Drivers .

Is it a built-in sound device that is part of the motherboard?

Did you change anything in the system or add/update other programs since this started happening?



Gale

If this has not resolved yet it might help us to know a lot more details.

First, exactly what do you mean by "skipping" every 10 seconds? Do you get brief periods of silence where there should be sound or bits of missing sound with no silence--like words dropped out? When do you notice the "skips" -- "I record a couple minutes of chat with my mic then immediately play it back and hear the skips." or "I record a couple minutes of chat with my mic, save the Project, close Audacity, then when I re-open the Project and play it back I hear the skips."

Next, choose the menu item Help > About Audacity... and tell us exactly what the complete version string is -- it might be something like 1.3.13 Beta Apr 11, 2011 (Unicode).

Tell us about your recording setup--all the hardware involved and generally what you are recording--source, length etc.. If the "skip" is not immediately apparent, what do you do before the "skip" is noticed?

The more details we have the more likely we are to be able to resolve the issue!

Wow, this sounds almost exactly like the problem I recently started to experience.

I installed 1.3.13 beta on my Win7 laptop in mid-October 2011 to start ripping my vinyl collection to MP3. I have made it through about 30 albums and Audacity has performed like a champ until just recently. Now I get these random recording anomalies that sound like bad skips during playback. Sometimes they are spaced regularly (like the OP says), or sometimes they are completely random. If I record the same vinyl a second time, I get a different set of anomalies. The anomalies are not always the same, but I've provided a screen shot of one of them on my server:

http://www.skew-matrix.com/music/vinyl/aud-ss.jpg

Note the anomaly lines up exactly with the 1/100th of a second ticks in Audacity, which seems highly indicative of an Audacity issue. (If it were a problem with my sound card driver, for example, it seems highly unlikely that the anomaly would just happen to line up with Audacity's ticks.)

In light of this, it seems like my hardware configuration is pretty much irrelevant, but here it is regardless: I've got a Thorens turntable hooked into a Technics receiver. I'm running the headphone out into a Behringer mixing board. The output of that goes to my laptop line in. Since it's a laptop, the soundcard is embedded in the motherboard. Windows device manager tells me it's a SigmaTel High Definition Audio device.

I've uninstalled and re-installed Audacity but there has been no change in the issue. I can't think of any system changes that would have introduced the issue (and, like I said, since the anomaly lines up exactly with Audacity's tick marks, it seems almost certainly to be an internal Audacity issue anyway).

Any ideas for things to try? Thanks!
-Paul

Additional info: Audacity version string is "1.3.13-beta (Unicode)". There is no date.

I hear the anomaly immediately during recording, if I have software playback enabled. It always sounds like a pop during recording.

However, as I said, the anomalies aren't always the same. The one I posted above definitely sounds and behaves like a pop: the song maintains a consistent beat when I play it back, and no time is lost.

However, sometimes the anomalies behave like Audacity briefly stops and resumes recording, so more like a "skip". During playback, I hear a popping noise, but the song's beat is not even, as if some time has been skipped over.

I hope this additional info helps.
-Paul

Diluvium's regular skips are probably associated with the moment when Audacity writes one of its small .au audio block files. Virus scanners are commonly to blame for that.

Paul, did you also try everything in:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Manag ... nd_Drivers ?

Why do you need the mixer board? Is it applying an EQ?

Are either of you using Software Playthrough or Overdub in the Transport Menu? Has it been a long time since you reinstalled Windows?



Gale

Hi Gale -- Thanks for the reply.

I'm using the mixing board to reduce the gain so that the signal doesn't overdrive my laptop's input.

I understand laptops aren't ideal for this task, but mine is fairly beefy as laptops go (Dell XPS 1730M). I do have a couple large dektop options I could try, including an 8-core Mac Pro desktop. If I'm unable to get the laptop to perform as it has been performing for the past 7 weeks, I'll consider switching systems.

No, I haven't yet worked my way through the list of suggestions to optimize my system. I'll give that a try. But, again, Audacity has been recording fine on this system up until just a few days ago. I know this indicates something in my system changed, but I'm having trouble getting my head around something external to Audacity causing a recording anomaly that is synchronized with Audacity's internal clock.
-Paul

PaulMartz wrote:I'm using the mixing board to reduce the gain so that the signal doesn't overdrive my laptop's input.

Just to exclude possibilities, if you monitor off the mixing board, does it sound OK?

Is the laptop line-in really a line-in or a mic in? I'm really surprised if you turned the headphone output down that it would still distort.

Do you have Software Playthrough or Overdub enabled? If so, does it help if you turn them off?

If you set the line-in as Default device in the Recording tab of "Sound" in Windows Control Panel, then record with Windows Sound Recorder, do you get the same issue?

Until you have done that, tried all the tips, and looked into the drivers of the built-in sound device, I don't think you can draw much conclusion. If you find the sound device drivers are made by Microsoft, you need to look at this page to get drivers matched with your motherboard:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Updat ... ce_Drivers .

If the drivers are not Microsoft, see if they can be rolled back to earlier non-Microsoft drivers - a Windows update may have installed a driver that isn't working properly.



Gale

Thanks again. It will take me a while to work through all the possibilities, because sometimes I am still able to record an entire album without any anomalies, and other times I get lots of anomalies. It seems fairly random. So if I try a system optimization and successfully record an album with no anomalies, it doesn't necessarily mean I've resolved the issue. Fortunately, I have plenty of albums waiting to be recorded.

In any event, thanks very much for the extensive advice. Especially in light of the fact that alot of this is FAQ material.
-Paul

Just to close this out...

I disabled software playthrough, disabled the meter toolbar, and zoomed out to 50 minutes (typical length of an album). Then I recorded 5 albums, restarting Audacity for each album (but not rebooting the computer). The first three albums recorded fine; the last 2 suffered from "skips" as if Audacity had briefly paused during recording -- on playback, there are no gaps, but brief parts of songs are missing and as a result the beat is uneven.

Next, I increased the audio buffer from 100ms to 300ms, I minimized Audacity during recording, and I only recorded after a fresh system reboot. I've recorded 7 albums since changing to this practice, and all have recorded successfully. One of them was a double album, so a 110 minute recording session, and it too was flawless.

Still not sure why this issue arose out of nowhere, but at least I have a solution at this point. Thanks!
-Paul