Only Hearing crackles In playback

So I record music In Audacity and recently got a problem where these crackle sounds happens In the playback of the finish track after being exported but I didn’t hear It initially,
But I tried figuring out the reasons for this problem and I don’t really know the cause of this since I thought the problem could be distortion, bass boosting.on the beat.

Though I replaced the beat track with the original without the effects and It’s still there, It could be me putting the beat to +0.5 db and could be clashing with my vocals,
So I’m guessing It’s the vocals but I don’t really know the fix to this.

I see that the file is quite high sampled. 48kHz and 32 bit. I would try to record or export with a lower rate, 48 or 44 kHz, 16 bit and see whether it happens.

Are you mixing tracks together, or is it just a one track recording?

The file that you posted is badly clipped (signal level far too high).


The sample rate is irrelevant to this problem.
It is highly recommended to always use 32-bit float format in Audacity (16-bit is sufficient and recommended in most cases for audio exports).

Hi. I didn’t know it. But why is it recommended to use 32bit when acquiring? Is it not always better to sample using directly the same format you use for the export?

On import or recording, Audacity will, by default, convert the incoming audio to 32-bit float. This conversion is extremely fast (virtually instant) and the conversion is perfect. This does not really matter with regard to capturing the audio, but it does make a difference when processing or mixing - Audacity works internally in 32-bit float, so there are several advantages to the track(s) also being 32-bit float:

  1. No format conversions are necessary when processing or mixing.
  2. 32-bit float provides better quality processing and mixing.
  3. Audacity can support audio above 0 dB when (and only when) the track(s) are float format (though the audio must be below 0 dB when you export).
  4. 16-bit audio is normally expected to have 90 dB dynamic range (full scale to lsb), but working in 32-bit float format and converting to 16-bit on export (with “dither”) can extend the dynamic range to more than 100 dB (at the expense of a tiny bit of noise).

Number 3 is the big one. When you mix tracks, the tracks are literally “added” together, and the mix may be over 0 dB. If the mix track is 16-bit or 24-bit (integer), then the mix will be permanently damaged due to the peaks being clipped off. If the mix track is 32-bit float, then the peaks are still OK (just too high), so you can amplify or normalize the track back down to the legal range below 0 dB.

Hi, thank you very much for the explanation. Then I will use 32 bit float, before the exporting.

Yes I am mixing tracks together, I’m wondering that Normalizing and amplifying the tracks may fix the problem, since all my tracks are 32 bit float and 48000Hz but I’m still working on the fix