Audacity Forum

Hi,
I'm an audiobook narrator and essentially "punch-record" with Audacity. I stop when I make a mistake, delete the mistake, then start recording again. Audacity creates a new track. It has always been fine. A couple weeks ago it started doing this thing where when I record a new track and then make a mistake and stop it, it moves that track backwards a bit so sometimes it's too close to the track above it and the sentences are too close together. Any idea why or how to stop that? I just want the tracks to stay where they are, so they start exactly at the end of the track on top of it. Thank you!

When recording a second (or later) track, the new recording will be a little late compared to the first track, due to the time it takes for sound to work its way from the audio input, through the computer to the disk. Typically this delay will be around 100ms (0.1 seconds), though it can vary a lot depending on the hardware. This delay is called "input latency".

Audacity attempts to correct this timing error by shifting the recording a bit to the left, but it can only guess as to how far to move it. By default it shifts the audio 100ms.
For Audacity to shift the recording the right amount, you need to calibrate. This page in the manual tells you how to do that: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/latency_test.html