Thanks for taking a look.
So I’m new as a spring chicken, and I’m trying to record some songs and acappella with an old a22m ibm and an M-audio fast track. It’s pretty cool; my friend left it at my place, so I’m trying to make the most of it whilst i can.

The problem: I record fine, and then when I listen back to the recording there’s this constant static or sound stubble that is almost like a computer making its thinking noises interweaved with the singing. So i have a few of these files, i didn’t upload anything yet - if you really care and want to hear, ill send to you. But any suggestions on how to get the sound to not have this interference.

Let me try to describe the interference better, the sound is like it’s on an old dirty vinyl that keeps kinda popping with the sound.

i thought at first it was that i connected through a usb hub, so i connected directly to the computer, and nothing doing. i’m using wavepad to record - is there an easy to get other program that might help or be more compatible (i’m on xp)…so yeah that’s my problem it seems like my recording is playing from crappy vinyl when it’s recording at good quality…

any help is greatly appreciated.

thanks
meino

Would you say it’s like a quiet ‘hum’ or ‘buzzing’ noise?

There are several things that might be causing it. The first thing I would try is some kind of direct instrument (like guitar or bass) to make sure there isn’t something in your microphone (if it uses batteries to power then replace those.)

In older computers with sound cards there used to a problem where the computer itself would create a constant hissing-buzz on all live recording but since you’re using an external USB device it doesn’t sound like that’s an issue.

The worst case scenario is that you a have “ground loop” problem in your home ( google search) which can be a lot of work to remove.

For cases where I get tracks from folks with this (or other constant noise in it) I use Sony’s Noise Reduction which is hyper-expensive but amazingly effective at this kind of stuff. For even more money Adobe Audition has a similarly brilliant noise reduction module and other miraculous tricks along with being a full blown wav editor and multi-track recorder.

I don’t know of a cheaper software to do this after the fact, my first try would be to make sure it isn’t the mic and then get everything in house properly grounded.

Hope this helps,
VS

Is the noise actually part of your recording, or generated by the computer during playback?

Have you tried burning a CD and playing it back on a Hi Fi?

The reason I ask is that I used to get a similar noise a few years ago which, after much experimentation, turned out to be mainly caused by conflicts with the video card. I changed video cards, and it was fixed instantly.

The problem was worse if I moved the mouse around a lot, or re-sized the screen during playback.

It wasn’t actually on the recording itself - they were clean if I wrote a CD and played it back elsewhere - so I didn’t worry about it too much, it was just very annoying through headphones.

Richard