Previous tracks bleed into the new one (Samson G-Track)

[Procne]

Hello, new here, by the moment I use Audacity 1.3.9 and 1.3.11-beta, but as this problem seems to be non-software related, and the mic I use, Samson G-Track, is explicitly the one you use in your tutorials, I thought I'd try to get a response here before going through the long process of updating to version 2, which might might not help for my current problem. I came here from the Linux Musician forum, who hinted that maybe you could help (here is the complete thread: http://www.linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic ... 27&t=11246). So far I've spent 20+ hours trying to solve this problem.

Here is the problem: I make my music recording it layer-after-layer, one at a time. But now, whenever I record voice with the G-Track, the previous tracks bleed into the new one. Idk if the problem is new, or it is only that I hadn't noticed it before. The bleeding is sometimes very obvious during the silences in the voice, other times is not that obvious, but you notice it when you normalize the track, and it adds up along the recording process.

I've found another thread in this forum that mentions the same problem, http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... corded%20. It says that some sound cards have a "what you hear" option that maybe picks up the sound and causes the problem, and that it can be disabled in an option in bios. But my bios menu does not have the slightest mention to the sound card. I wonder if you have some suggestion because until I find it I'm stuck, I don't want to get more gear only to discover that the problem was within the computer...

(More data about my equipment: laptop Compaq Presario CQ50, the inbuilt sound card is HDA Intel G45, the distro Puppy Studio 3.3.)

[Gale Andrews]

I don't understand in the three tutorials for specialist hardware linked to from http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tu ... rdubs.html why the suggestion is made to set playback and recording devices to the onboard sound card. I would say that is a copy-paste error and perhaps that is part of the problem?

If you set the Audacity playback and recording devices to a USB mic that has a built in headphones jack and ensure the mic doesn't send the computer playback back to Audacity I don't see why you would get bleed through of the tracks you're singing over.


Gale

[Procne]

I don't understand in the three tutorials for specialist hardware linked to from http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tu ... rdubs.html why the suggestion is made to set playback and recording devices to the onboard sound card. I would say that is a copy-paste error and perhaps that is part of the problem?

Yes, I noticed that and was going to report the Audacity team. The parameters mentioned there make no sense (here is the relevant fragment of my Linux Musicians thread:)

As far as my understanding goes, there is a mistake in the tutorial. It says

in the Devices tab:

* Under Playback set Device to the on-board sound card
* Under Recording set Device to the on-board sound card and set Channels to 1 (Mono)



When I did that, Audacity listened to and played through the inbuilt computer mic. Instead, the instructions should say "set device to the mic (USB Codec)", I understand. I had to do that in order to continue with the tutorial. I'd like to report this to the Audacity team, but I wanted to comment it here first in case I am missing something.

-----

If you set the Audacity playback and recording devices to a USB mic that has a built in headphones jack and ensure the mic doesn't send the computer playback back to Audacity I don't see why you would get bleed through of the tracks you're singing over.

Exactly. In all innocence, I tried doing a few more tests, acting as a newcomer, and found something that might be relevant:
as I also mention in the LM thread, when I tried to follow the Audacity+G-Track tutorial, once I corrected the error mentioned above, I stumbled upon a new problem: the recorded track sounded like chopped by a helicopter. This time, what I've tried is recording it to 32000Hz instead of 44100, and it solved the chopping.

Then, here is the peculiar thing, I went back to 44100, tried recording again, and the track was recorded well!!! (although with the bleeding).

What could be the cause of this erratic behavior? Could frequency affect this kind of bleeding? For example, maybe the G-Track works better limited to 32000, but then the card leaks a bit of its stuff via the extra bytes?

[waxcylinder]

@Koz: I think that Procne (and Gale) are right here. Surley in the three tutorials in the Wiki it should say: "set device to the mic (USB Codec)" as Procne points out.

If you can confirm that this is what you intended for those tutorials then I will update the Wiki pages accordingly.

Thanks,
Peter.

[kozikowski]

Just to cover the bases, you are using good quality, sealed headphones, right?

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/wynonna2.jpg

Headphones are required for an overdubbing session.

It's not unheard of for a particularly deaf rock musician to make the headphones so loud they leak through his mouth -- I'm not making that up.

Koz

[kozikowski]

@waxy.
You should drop me a PM note when something like this happens. I don't read all the postings. Koz

[waxcylinder]

Koz, I was going to, tomorrow if you hadn't seen it by then.

But you didn't answer my previous Question : Is the poster right about the input device should be the USB - I'm pretty sure that's right?

Peter Waxy

[kozikowski]

Almost certainly, but I want to go back and read the original text before I jump up and down. I tried only jumping up once and it didn't end well.

Koz

[kozikowski]

The original text appears to be correct.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/overdubb ... Track.html

I'll go check the Audacity posting.
Koz

[kozikowski]

The Audacity posting is not correct. Follow the original text.

Koz