Audacity Forum

I've just started to experiment with recording voice and guitar using Audacity. It works fine with:

Desktop system (very fast CPU, no special sound card) with Win 7 -> Audiobox USB -> Rode and Sterling mic -> Audacity 2.1.0

But then I tried with my HP laptop (Celeron N2840 CPU 2.16GHz), Win 8 -> same Audiobox and mics and Audacity version:

I get about three seconds of good sound and then the signal disintegrates into gibberish or no sound at all. What gives? Win 8 (which I don't like)?? Inadequate audio processor?

Thanks for any fixes. I'm meeting a singer tomorrow and was expecting to get some modestly passable recording out of it.

Doug

Upgraded to Audacity 2.2.2, which gives me more seconds of sound but still lots of gibberish. And though the mic is a foot from the guitar -- either a Sterling (which I think is directional) or the Rode NT1-A which I don't think is directional -- all I hear is voice, no guitar.

Check for any Windows "enhancements".

Are you recording all tracks simultaneously? If so latency delays are not important so you should try to increase the buffer size in your audio ( microphone) driver setup if you have that option. Failing that you will have to reduce the sample rate so that the laptop will have enough processing power to keep up.