Audacity Forum

I'm using audacity 2.2.2; Win 10; I'm recording an hour long podcast and each recording has a dropout at 24 and 48 minutes every time. I've searched this forum and the FAQ's and followed every "solution" to no avail. It started suddenly with an older version 2.0.6 out of the blue so I updated to 2.2.2 and as I said followed all the suggestions after updating. Thank you.

There are flavors of dropout.

Zoom into one of the dropouts, drag-select it (include some sound on both sides), Export WAV (Microsoft) 16-bit and post it on the forum.

Scroll down from a forum text window > Upload Attachment.......

If it's a stereo show, you can't go over 10 seconds; mono, 20 seconds. If the dropout is longer than that, say so.

Koz

The dropout just messes with the word if there is one. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to have the dropout at a pause in the voice. The sample should have said "You turn off the music" you see the "turn" is where the dropout is. Thank you.

KMR wrote:has a dropout at 24 and 48 minutes every time

and 72 minutes?
My guess is that some other application is hitting the CPU hard every 24 minutes. Check what applications / processes are running.

steve wrote:and 72 minutes?
My guess is that some other application is hitting the CPU hard every 24 minutes. Check what applications / processes are running.

Thanks, Steve, I'll have a look.

Restart the machine and make sure nothing else starts.

If you don't absolutely need the network connection, turn it off. Kill the WiFi if you have it running.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:Restart the machine and make sure nothing else starts.

If you don't absolutely need the network connection, turn it off. Kill the WiFi if you have it running.

Thanks, Koz, I'll try that, as well.

KMR wrote:

steve wrote:and 72 minutes?
My guess is that some other application is hitting the CPU hard every 24 minutes. Check what applications / processes are running.

Thanks, Steve, I'll have a look.

I watched to see if anything was hitting the CPU every 24 minutes and nothing. I had it running for over an hour to see if I missed anything. At first it looked like Defender was doing something so I completely shut it down, still showing dropouts every 24 minutes, consistently. This is a computer that is exclusively used for recording so I update everything manually. I have all firewalls and security disabled.

I also did what Koz recommended. Restarting with nothing at startup and turning off wifi. The attachment shows the dropouts. I just ran Audacity not actually recording anything and as you can see it still has the dropouts.

Thanks for all your help!

A surprising number of programs are run from the task scheduler. To check this use the run option from the start menu and type in taskschd.msc. Look for a task which may be scheduled to run every 24 minutes and see if its practical to disable it ( right click and select disable).

It looks like I found a solution, in Preferences > Recording > Software Playthrough of Input. I had it checked so I unchecked it, recorded for two hours and NO DROPOUTS. Woohoo! I hope it was that simple and it continues to work for me and possibly others. Thanks for everyone's help.