Audacity Forum

Hi everyone,

There is a strange audio problem that my podcast partner and I came across when recording today.

It is very strange because it's the first podcast with this issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbZjxDmtn8Q

You'll notice my deeper voice doesn't have much issue, although it does sometimes sound off.

But my partner's higher pitch voice crackles.

Is there anyone I can do about this in edit?

Your partner's voice sounds distorted because it's severely clipped, likely because it was recorded way too loud. You might be able to improve it a little by using Effects -> Clip Fix on the isolated voice (not the actual podcast), but if neither you nor your partner has an undamaged (i.e., not clipped) backup, you're mostly out of luck without rerecording.

Can you specify where in the podcast your voice sounds off? I'm not going to listen through an entire half-hour podcast just to maybe find where your voice might have a problem. (I'm guessing it's the same as above, but not quite as bad.)

When recording, try to aim for a maximum peak of about -6 dB; if it peaks above that, stop the recording, lower the recording volume, then try again. And don't forget to save uncompressed or lossless (e.g., WAV/AIFF/FLAC, not MP3) backups of your unprocessed recordings in case something else goes wrong.

Clipping during recording will irreparably ruin your show.