Comments on: Cassette to Audacity recording problem with heavy static

By: Bruce

Bruce — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:23:45 +0000

I too have the problem. Stanton T.90 USB turn table. OSX 10.5.5 iMac, 4GB memory, Audacity 1.3.5d
If I hit the “pause” button, while recording, so sound continues to come out through the speakers, static stops.
Same if I use headphones. I’m with the low memory theory. I went to a web page (Gracenote) while recording that loaded a large java script and the static started. Now it starts frequently. Other days record albums w/no issue. Elsewhere a post mentioned “being dead” once the static starts. Memory leak somewhere?

No advice here, just commiseration.

Cheers all,

By: Didier

Didier — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:20:52 +0000

Colin and Jed,

Try restarting your computer with your slave drive as your 1st boot device. Install only the necessary software on your slave drive.

By: Colin Middleton

Colin Middleton — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:41:25 +0000

Jed,
I have just seen you comments from last January. I am experiencing exactly the same problems using a Lenco turntable with a USB connection to my computer. It records perfectly for a variable amount of time and then the “huge wash of static”arrives and completely blocks out everything else. Solution, starting and stopping, is also just as you describe. I have looked around many settings, cables etc but cannot see any obvious causes for this.
Did you ever find out what the cause, and hopefully solution, for the problem is?

Regards Colin Middleton

By: casper

casper — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:58:18 +0000

oops, a typo – Try recording with power adapter disconnected – mac’s power adaptor is a source of this static.

By: casper

casper — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:57:32 +0000

Try removing recording when your mac is running on a battery with power adapter disconnected.

By: Andy Kaiser

Andy Kaiser — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:00:42 +0000

Interesting, Jed, and thanks for the info!

I’d be curious to know if Audacity does that to you when not using your Ion Tape2PC as the playback device. If no, the Ion may be at fault. If yes, then you may have discovered a bug in the Mac version of Audacity.

By: Jed

Jed — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 05:33:17 +0000

I’m encountering a similar problem, but it’s intermittent, so I don’t know if it’s the same thing the questioner was running into. I have a USB tape deck (Ion Tape2PC), and I’m connecting via USB cable to my Mac, with Audacity 1.2.5 (the recommended version for my Mac, according to the Audacity site). Everything works perfectly for a half-hour or so, and then suddenly there’ll be a huge wash of static almost drowning out the music, and the static won’t stop as long as I keep recording.

The weirdest part of this is that if I stop recording but continue to listen to the incoming audio via the “Monitor Input” option, the static goes away.

I kinda think the static may occur when Audacity is low on memory, or low on disk space, or something. It happens without the computer or the cables being moved, so I don’t think it’s a loose connection. It happened once when I started playing a YouTube video at the same time as importing, but that’s the only time there’s been a clear cause-and-effect.

Sometimes quitting and restarting Audacity makes the static go away; sometimes not. If I go away and leave it alone for a while and then come back to it, it usually seems to start working again. I suppose it’s possible something could be overheating, but that seems unlikely.

Anyway, this isn’t a request for support or answers; just providing you with some extra data, in case it’s useful.