Out of synk tracks

[beatnick5]

After about four tracks depending on the length of the tracks seem to shorten when stop record is pressed.
So you end up with a bass track's that are out of synk, not good and very frustrating.
I record on a 1200mz laptop it maybe to slow but has only started to happening lately.
I could run seven four minute tracks no probs before.
Are there any tweeks I can do to audacity so it runs smoother?
Also I have been getting impresive sound quality results is there any merit remastering by "pros".
Or maybe some sort of auto (EQ) plugin that would do the same?

Thanks.
Nick

[alatham]

After about four tracks depending on the length of the tracks seem to shorten when stop record is pressed.

What does that mean? Are the tracks getting shifted, or are they being recorded at the wrong sample rate? If they're shifted you can use the Time-Shift tool to fix it. But if the tracks are at the wrong length then something much worse is happening. Isolate the tracks that are funny and let us know if they're off-pitch. That will tell us for sure.


Also, your computer is plenty fast, but Audacity will run better if you have fewer programs running in the background (especially virus checkers). In Windows you can safely disable almost every program in the Task Manager.

As for mastering, there is no automatic way to do it. There's a reason those guys make $100+ / hour. There's nothing stopping you from mastering a record yourself except a lack of experience and know-how, but all that can be learned. Make sure you listen to your music in several different environments and with different speakers before you declare the sound quality impressive, you'll be surprised at how much difference there is between your computer room and your car or living room.

[beatnick5]

Morning every one.
What happens is the faulty track starts of fine and towards the end of a three minit song runs about one sec early
All tracks are at 24 bit , 44100hz, it is happening after one track now, I think it may be a virus.
The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite 1200mz. 40g hard disk. 512 mem. I even use the Task Manager and turned every thing I dont need runing off "No good" time to backup and format.
With mastering I have been testing a program called "AAMS auto mastering" but it seems to over compress but levels the bottom end well I will experiment more with it.
Thanks for your imput.
Nick Hoyes.

[alatham]

I highly doubt you have a virus. I'm not sure it's even possible to write a virus that would mess with your soundcard's clock, but even if you could, what would be the point?

Granted, virus writers aren't the brightest people out there.

Your problem is probably a hardware one. You seem to be suffering from clock drift, meaning that the clock for your soundcard is not running at the right rate. If you know anyone who has one, try borrowing a USB audio interface and see if it works properly. If you want, you can buy one too, the cheapest one I've seen is the Behringer UCA-202. It's far from great, but it's only $30.

If I'm right about the hardware, there is no way to fix it in software. But I might be wrong and it could be a software problem. Make sure you can return your new hardware if it doesn't work any better.

[richardash1981]

Buggy sound card drivers can cause perfectly good sound hardware to behave like it's completely useless, so make sure they are the right drivers for your hardware and OS.

[beatnick5]

Sorry about not getting back to you all about my latensey drama
all i did was update "windows media player" in xp pro.
simple as that.
Thanks for your Time and intrest.
'MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL"
beatnick5

[beatnick5]

Ps have a listen to some work i havd done with audacity at myspace
look for "Dead Till Friday" in the music selection
there are three bands with that name but we are the ozy ones.
Take it eazy guys
beatnick5