Audio Breakup with 1.3.8

[rj7500]

Hi folks

I experienced something today that seemed very unusual. I recorded about 1 minute of voiceover material and when I played back the Audacity file through headphones I heard audio breakup that sounded much like overdriving.

When I repeated the playback the breakup disappeared leading me to believe that it's not a recording but some playback level problem. Subsequently, I played back again and the breakup appeared in another part of the recording. The thing is I haven't changed any settings recently so I'm confused as to what the problem is. Any help?

Audacity1.3.8

Windows XP SP3

Input is a Tascam US 122 Ato D converter
I have a screenshot of my Audacity desktop but it's too large to attach in this forum. The breakup is random during playback and not repeatable.
Thanks in advance
Bob H

[kozikowski]

Do you have normal blue waves and bouncing green sound meters?

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_playback.jpg

No punching maximum meters or blue waves filling up the space?

Where are the headphones plugged in?

Can we assume if you play the sound track on Anything Else, it's fine?

You said a magic thing there. You do not have an Audacity "file." You have an Audacity Project which can be thousands of files and folders, all managed by the AUP file. If you email the AUP file to someone, they will get a very small text file written in XML programming language and very little else.

To get a real sound file, you have to Export one.

Leaping to the assumption that your headphones are plugged into the USB device. Clean it. Pull the plug and reseat it several times and see if that doesn't help. These devices get a lot of power from the USB plug and if it isn't feeling well, everything suffers -- particularly the headphones which take a lot of power.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Google tells us there's no shortage of people having noise problems with the Tascam 122. Sometimes it's necessary to put a wall-powered USB hub in line with the device so it gets its juice from the wall power supply and not the poor USB power pins.

USB power may be convenient, but sometimes it just doesn't work.

Koz

[rj7500]

Thanks Koz

Blue Waves and Green meters seem normal, nothing unusual in the recorded waves.

The headset is indeed plugged into the USB122 and........when I export the Audacity Project to my computer the playback is normal and so now I'll take your advice and first reset the USB connection from the computer input to the AC powered hub.

I will keep you posted.

[rj7500]

Alas......nothing improved and things began to deteriorate rapidly. Today the blue waves became distorted and the playback was totally unusable.

We all know what has to be done in that case.

I went to my trusty CCleaner and removed Audacity Beta 1.3 and then reinstalled the original Audacity program which solved all my problems.

Oh, but just one quick question. If I physically move a toolbar (meter bar) from one area to another, how do I make Audacity remember it and open later with the meter in place and not docked on top?

Thanks for your time and patience.

Bob H

[rj7500]

The problem had reared itself, now in 1.3.13. Random breakup that's not repeatable and not exported as .mp3 or .wav formats. Only heard as I check the project pre export. Is this possibly a latency problem.

Thanks
Bob H

[steve]

Audacity 1.3.13 fixes many bugs that were in 1.3.8, so I'd recommend that you upgrade.
Toolbar positions should be automatically remembered by Audacity as long as a) the Toolbars are docked, and b) you are at the same window size.
If the sound is "breaking up" on playback then you probably have some other program running (possibly in the background) that is using too much CPU or too much disk access time for Audacity to run smoothly. Look in the Task Manager to see what else is running.

[rj7500]

I upgraded to .13 as suggested.
During my last recording session I disabled Norton Anti Virus which I believed to be the culprit, also my email program. However, neither seemed to solve the problem

I've attached a screenshot of a typical recording session with the Task Manager window inset.
As far as I can tell, nothing in Task Manager is using up CPU time. Any further help would be greatly appreciated.

Bob H

[steve]

Your e-mail program is still running in the background.
If possible set Incredimail to not start on boot up, or shut down incmail.exe and ImApp.exe when recording.
They don't appear to be using much CPU, but they will probably kick in periodically to try and check for new mail.
If you've not done so already, defragment your hard drive.
See here for other suggestions: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Troub ... ings#Skips

[rj7500]

Thanks Steve. Closing a bunch of tasks in the background seems to have helped. The wiki also suggested changing the timeline so that it's zoomed out and not refreshing the page as often. Is it possible to start a project window with the timeline setting changed or is that something that must be done with each new project?

Bob H