Something has changed..... [SOLVED]

[dfs]

I use Audacity 2.1.1 on my windows 10 laptop as a recording platform. I believe I installed from the exe.
It was operating normally on Friday evening.
Sunday afternoon I went to do some work and found that windows had apparently auto-updated.
I didn't think anything of it and started to work and found a nasty surprise.
...vocal recordings now make me sound like a super-villian from a cheezy 80 cartoon.
I've attached a sample of me saying something like "This is me talking."
I spent several hours trying to track down what settings have changed where and I'm just not finding it.
Swapping a new microphone in doesn't change the behavior.
Things recorded 3 days ago sound normal.
Things recorded today are useless.
Ideas?

[kozikowski]

a recording platform.

That doesn't tell us enough. Describe the studio. Include makers and part numbers. Describe the pathway.

Swapping a new microphone in doesn't change the behavior.

We wouldn't know because you didn't tell us what the original microphone was.

I've attached a sample of me saying something like "This is me talking."

Accuracy is good here. I don't think those are the words in that clip. If you post a mono clip, you can go to 20 seconds as a WAV before the system cuts you off. Post a longer one and tell us exactly what the words are.

I know this is a standing joke, but did you shut down the machine and then start it back up? I mean really shut it down with that Win10 magic key combination, not the fake one.

Remember to connect your sound system before you start Audacity.

Do Not Let any other audio applications start including Skype, Google Chat, etc.

Koz

[Trebor]

...I've attached a sample of me saying something like "This is me talking."

It's "speaking into my microphone", with the pitch dropped by ~50% , (without changing tempo ).

... windows had apparently auto-updated.
I didn't think anything of it and started to work and found a nasty surprise.
...vocal recordings now make me sound like a super-villian from a cheezy 80 cartoon.

If there was an audio-driver update, that could cause the problem. You could roll-back to the previous audio-driver software ...
http://www.howtogeek.com/223864/how-to- ... indows-10/

[steve]

I presume that you have tried rebooting the computer?

[Gale Andrews]

If you are recording at 96000 Hz you could try changing that to 44100 H or 48000 Hz bottom left of Audacity. You are only making low quality recordings (by the sound of it) so you will not benefit from high sample rates.

If you are using the computer's internal microphone or microphone connected to the computer, microphone port, also try turning off Windows sound enhancements.

If you need more help, please say much more about what type of microphone and how it connects to the computer.


Gale

[dfs]

Thank you.
The Lenovo Thinkpad W520 internal microphone driver has not been updated since 2012, but yes indeed there is a record of the device being reinstalled.
Of course when the device was reinstalled they put in default values instead of the values that I painstakingly figured out by hand four years ago.

One of those values allowed the device (the laptop's sound card) to process the signal before handing it off to the calling program.

Why it "processed" the signal that way is a mystery to me, but turning off that feature puts me right back where I wanted to go.

Not an Audacity problem at all.
Thank you all for the help.
Indeed looking deeper solved the problem.