Audacity Forum

Koz: After applying multiple fixes, I recorded 20 minutes of voice narration. The clicks and distortions were significantly reduced.

These are the fixes I applied. I do not know which may have had an effect. I post these with the thought that it might help others.

1. I followed instructions on the Focus website about making my computer optimized for audio recording, which included disabling programs to run in the background and keeping computer set at high performance power setting.
2. I used a latency problem detector app. It suggested that I had latency problems that could be network related. The only action I felt comfortable taking in response to this was disabling my bluetooth app.
3. The latency check also had me disable CPU throttling settings in the control panel and BIOS settings. In BIOS, I disabled EIST (Enhanced Intel Speedstep[ Technology).
4. On Audacity, I changed MME to Windows Direct Sound as Audacity website suggested there might be lower latency with Windows Direct Sound.
5. I increased buffer length from 100 milliseconds to 110 milliseconds.

I am hoping that the improvement is sustained as I continue recording.

I am surprised you did not hear any clicks. I can hear them and SEE them on the waveform as they occur.

Again, the time and energy all of you have supplied is much appreciated.

I can hear them and SEE them on the waveform as they occur.

Where?

Koz

I thought I had the problem solved. Here is another sample of the clicks. You should find these easily. There are a couple of distortions also.

I thought I had the problem solved.

As a fuzzy rule, you change one thing and the problem vanishes. Gone. You are most unlikely to have two or more problems at once (but it does happen) and if you don't hit the exact problem, it gets squishy and erratic and just comes back later at the worst possible time.

I don't recognize the problem at "Skidding." Again, generally, when someone gets odd flipping and skipping like that, there is digital zero in the holes between sounds. You don't have normal holes. You have some trash in the skips. Worse yet, it looks like someone or something is carefully creating those holes. They have editing signatures.

Is that the raw reading or after processing?

Are you using Cloud Services or Network Connected drives? Even if you're not using those for Audacity, sometimes just having them connected can cause problems.

I don't recognize that and apparently, nobody else does either. You will probably spend the rest of your life running this down.

9. Stop using the computer.

There is an evil side to this. It looks exactly like someone is intentionally creating this distortion to drive everyone crazy.

Koz