Why does this happen and how can I stop it? The only way I've found to get rid of it is to unplug the microphone, shut down Audacity and restart it. Then I get another 10-15 minutes of recording before it happens again. It is very annoying!
I don't think it is the fan, I usually record on battery only, and I can't work out if this is a problem with the microphone or the computer or Audacity - or some communication issue with some combination.
Technical people, ideas please!
UPDATE: The problems seems to be in the mic itself (Rode Podcaster) as it doesn't happen when I record on the computer's inbuilt mic.
Last edited by Elizabby on January 17th, 2018, 6:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
I think the cause of this is that Audacity runs out of some resource that it needs (memory? CPU? room on temporary storage?) and the process/thread that does the conversion of the samples received from the audio driver into some internal form gets pushed out in favor of some other process/thread. Essentially they are competing for a system resource, and in the fight each gets a bit of the time with it and when Audacity get its time slice, it manages to store some samples, then drops most (since the driver keeps pushing new ones on it), stores some more (from its own buffer), and so forth, until you interrupt it and it gets a short reprieve to catch up...
I suggest looking at two things.
First, there's probably some other process running in the background that suddenly gets busy and takes over some part of the system (RAM, CPU, hard drive) which Audacity and/or the audio driver also desperately needs. It could be the anti-virus program for all we know. If you don't expect anything to crawl into your computer while you're recording, turn the AV off. It could be your e-mail program. Do you really need e-mail checked while you're recording? If not, quit that app and let your computer be a bit more attentive to you.
Second, if you know where in your audio driver you could change the amount of memory in its buffer, try changing it. Perhaps it wants increase. Or perhaps vice versa, it should be reduced (which might cause more frequent exchange between Audacity and the driver, which will make CPU busier...). If you run on the battery, your CPU is made to slack out on purpose. If you plug in, it would be actually easier for it to process all the data because it's going to be running at higher frequency.
Try to watch the resources. See how much free space you have on the drive which Audacity uses for temporary storage. See how much RAM you have while Audacity is recording and get the sense of whether you run out of it - on Windows you'd use Task Manager to show you how memory is used, consumed, etc. On a Mac there is the Activity Monitor. If you determine that your hard drive gets full, clean up some more room on it, defrag it. If you find that the memory gets tight, think of upgrading your RAM.
Good luck!
tovarisch
reality prompts me to scale down my reading, sorry to say to PLers: do correct my pronunciation please
I'm not disagreeing b- but I thought resources might be the problem too and downloaded it but it certainly is not the way audacity behaved when I was running out of resources. I got a series of missing bits rather than a stutter.
But it's definitely worth a look at what else is running in the background - in my case it was a virus scan starting up.
What version of Audacity are you using? Their official forum is blowing up due to their last release. It is creating havoc. Running on battery or plugged in should make no difference. In fact, you should get a much cleaner recording running on battery power. As mentioned above, make sure you have the bare min of programs running in the background when recording. I always reboot my system if I will be recording into Reaper. The image below is how you check to see where audacity is storing your files and how much hd space you have available.
Well, I've discovered another weird thing about this stutter - it only happens with the USB mic (Rode Podcaster) and not with the inbuilt computer mic! I accidentally recorded on the computer mic and it was perfectly smooth all the way through - switched mics, and the stutter started up again right away!
Is there something else I should be looking at, either software or hardware, in the mic itself?
Lately I have been getting the dropouts Anne describes (which might be related to the meltdown patch, who knows) and doubling this buffer setting below from 100 to 200 (in Preferences: Recording) has solved the problem. It's not the same behavior you're getting exactly but it might be worth trying.
