Differing Recording Quality

[EliseRobinson]

I record songs using my own mp3 backing tracks, which I import into Audacity easily.
I use a Sennheiser headset to record into Audacity, and occasionally, a 'Pro-sound' hand-held microphone, which requires a preamp. I'm on Windows XP professional, running other audio software well such as TeamSpeak & Ventrilo. Why is Audacity playing up all of a sudden?

For the last few months, Audacity has seemed to have "mood-swings" and chooses when to record high quality, clear vocals. It is nothing to do with me changing microphones, and nothing to do with the files I import. Sometimes the vocals I record sound muffled and like I'm singing in a different room to the microphone, and sometimes the same set-up produces brilliantly clear recordings.

I posted my original problems in the 1.2x forum, and have since upgraded to the 1.3 beta version of Audacity. Posting here seems more suited to my problem now.

Any ideas as to what could be changing to record muffled vocals? And how I can change any settings to ensure top-notch recordings every time? All suggestions much appreciated!!


Thanks again,
Elise

[kozikowski]

There was another posting here about oddball Audacity behavior and after a bunch of questions, they admitted that they were running a number of other audio programs and they were all stepping on each others preferences.

Audacity is a bit of a loaner. If you look at your whole production process instead of just Audacity, what was the last program you ran before Audacity messed up?

Koz

[steve]

If you have the "VST Enabler" plug-in for Audacity (VST Bridge), try removing it and see if this fixes it.

[EliseRobinson]

I don't use that plug-in, so nothing to remove there. Thanks anyway =)

After a complete restart Audacity works well, you're right =) It's just really annoying having to restart before recording into Audacity. Is there any information I can get on what software might interfere with Audacity or my recording setup?

Thanks, Elise

[steve]

Is there any information I can get on what software might interfere with Audacity or my recording setup?

The usual suspects are VST plug-ins (if you have the VST enabler in Audacity - hence my previous suggestion).

After that the documented cases on Windows are quite rare, so there is not any real list of problem programs. The best thing to do is to try to keep the number of programs running to a minimum (good practice anyway to ensure good performance from Audacity), and be on the lookout for any programs that cause problems. The most likely programs are other audio programs, but this can include web browser plug-ins.

[EliseRobinson]

Thanks Steve & Co.! Since following your hints on closing all other software before using Audacity, the recording quality has been up to standard. Only the occasional restart has been needed, guessing it's something to do with a web plug-in as I have quite a few attached to Mozilla Firefox.

Great fast responses, a great service. Thanks all =)

Elise