Audacity skips, glitches

[redtoby]

I am having a rotten time running Audacity 1.2.6 under XP Home.

I get audio skips every few minutes of recording.

I then have to re-record sections and patch them in. Sometimes a few words are lost, sometimes just the middle of a word.

Probably my second-hand PC is to blame (XP, P4 2.66 GHz, 512 MB, 80 GB, onboard sound and video ) for these glitches.

The Audacity forums suggest turning off the VU meters, and more importantly, EVERYTHING else (email, network, antispy, antivirus).

I stop and save every so often during recording, and later on during editing.

The Audacity forums seem to think I need a new sound card to prevent these audio dropouts or recording gaps.
Well that is not going to happen

I may have to record my orphink chapters on 8-track cassette tape and mail them in.

RedToby

[kri]

Have you tried recording somewhere other than Audacity? What I mean to say is, are you sure it's Audacity and not your microphone? There is a Wav recorder in Windows that you can use to record simple audio. Try that and see if you get the same audio skips. If so, I'd suggest buying a new microphone (much cheaper than getting a new soundcard). If you buy a new microphone, make sure that it's a USB microphone, that plugs into your USB port. Then it won't matter how good or crappy your sound card is.

[kayray]

Got lots of free RAM and disk space?

[thistlechick]

Yep, I get this quite often too (very very frustrating!)... I have narrowed it down to my harddrive being nearly full... if I have less than 2gig of space free then it happens more frequently.

Soooo... try deleting temp files; uninstall programs you don't use; move large files you want to keep to external hard drives, memory sticks, or servers; and do any other cleanup you can... or install more memory (hehe... I haven't gotten to that point yet though =)

Let us know if you find anything else that helps too.

[redtoby]

Ahh, many thanks for all the help.

I already doubled my memory from 256 to 512 MB and no joy

Memory log shows amount to be sufficient, especially after shutting down nearly everything but Audacity.

My 80 GB hard drive is defragmented and only 1/4 full.

Successfully recorded using some other trial version of recording software from download.com -- Can't remember the name but it was brutally expensive to actually buy after the 14 day trial period

I was able to export to .WAV and import into Audacity for editing.

I am using a cheapo analog mic, maybe a USB would be better. I'll see if I can borrow one.

~~ RT

[Peter Why]

I use an analog mike. On my previous computer, I did buy a very cheap Soundblaster card, which helped sound quality a lot, but as far as I noticed, didn't affect the way Audacity works.

When I first started recording, I would record onto tape using a dynamic mike (which the computer didn't get enough input from), and then load the file into Audacity for editing. You might try that, to see whether it's a microphone input problem or a file-handling problem.

Peter

[rachelellen]

The only time I ever had skips with Audacity was when I was running iTunes in the background, doing a big download (Jericho -- new episode tomorrow!). iTunes is an enormous RAM hog, and apparently that didn't play well with Audacity. (am using the 1.2.something, not the beta 1.3)

[redtoby]

Lots of good advice from the LV group, thanks! I really like Audacity. Just wish my PC had the chops to work properly with it (bis: Dell Dim2400, XP HE SP2, P4 2.66 GHz, 512 MB, 80 GB IDE, onboard A/V)

It is hard being a n00bie. But then if I wanted the easy road, I would just run Linux

Another answer from my local guru is that my cheapo onboard video is using up my main RAM. He suggests getting a PCI video card. Believe it or not this entry-level old PC does not have an AGP video slot

I like the idea of the USB mic bypassing the shabby onboard sound card too.

Will report back so other cheapskates... uhm... frugal users might benefit.

RT

[dougedmunds]

Have you tried recording somewhere other than Audacity?

There's a free version and a trial version of a different program here:
http://www.roemersoftware.com/

If you have the same problems with that one, then it's not Audacity, it's
your system. My experience is that most built-in sound cards are designed for playback, not recording.

I use a US-122 from Tascam. It has a feature missing
from the standard internal sound card: you can set a buffer
size.
---
The US-122 driver temporarily stores
input and output audio samples in buffers.
Larger buffers provide more safety
against other system activities interrupting
the audio and producing clicks, pops
or other audible artifacts.

The trade-off with a buffer is latency:
latency is the delay between making the sound
and hearing the sound, measured in parts of
a second.

Using Cubase VST at 44.1 kHz sampling
rate, a 256 sample buffer size gives
approximately. 12 ms of monitoring
latency, while a 2048 sample buffer gives
approximately 43 ms latency.

[redtoby]

Thanks! I did not know about Roemer.

Note that I was able to record a long chapter perfectly to a WAV file using freeware Expstudio Audio Editor Free 4.0.7 found at download.com.

Then I imported the WAV into Audacity and edited it and exported it to MP3.

Not an elegant workaround, but it gets me back in the game for now.

I am going to try using a USB mic first, then I will try a PCI sound card.

Reading the Audacity forums, I do see that many users have this dropout skip glitch problem, and most solve it with a new sound card.

RedToby

[redtoby]

Well my new USB microphone came and the weird sound skips and audio dropouts are now gone from Audacity.

I guess recording directly from a USB mic instead of using my old slow onboard sound card is the trick.

Unfortunately, though I have been warned, I went with a Logitech desk mic because I could get it nearly instantaneously through eBay. $7 including next day shipping and handling (amazing eh?)

The sound is somewhat digital, edgy, and hollow, but I will tweek the settings and see what can be done. The big issue of Audacity glitches is gone.

Thanks to all for their advice, both here and in friendly private messages.

RedToby

[kayray]

The logitech USB desk mic is fine choice. I used it for a great many of my recordings until I upgraded. Not professional-sounding, but plenty good enough :)