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So I’m still a new podcaster.  My show’s plugging along, and I’m having a blast with it, but suddenly my Audacity just started getting iffy.  In all honesty, I’ve got no idea what I’ve done, but my recording suddenly started sucking.

I suppose I can describe my problem as if I’m suddenly getting some form of clipping while recording when I shouldn’t be.  That is, as I record, and the Audio Tracks are being viewed as Waveforms, I can’t seem to get the audio to go any louder than .5.  Even if I yell into the microphone, Audacity limits me, and I get all kinds of distortion.

I have no idea what I did to cause this to happen.  Last night, I had no difficulty recording.  Tonight I sit down, didn’t (intentionally) change any settings, and this is the trouble I’m having.

I’ve got a show I need to prepare and have up and running for Thursday morning, so I gotta figure something out.  I don’t have time to learn another audio recording program; I just need to figure out why Audacity is messing with me now so I can get Episode 7 of Mail Order Zombie out this week . . . I’ve tried this in both version 1.2.6 and 1.3 . . . this is so freakin’ weird . . .

Can anyone hook a brother up?

Tell me about your rig. Are you just plugging a mic directly into the computer or are you using some kind of mixer/midi interface? Have you looked at the preferences you have set for your input device in your computer? I can take you through it on the Mac, I’ll have to do a little thinking about it on the PC.

I seem to recall we had this problem back in ye olden days. We record the audio then do some post-production to boost the audio. You might want to do some experiments.

I record the podcast and save it. Then I select everything and do a high pass filter at the default level. Then I select everything again to do “equalization” which seems to help - but we have the problem of being too loud rather than too quiet.

Anyway, I’ll see if I can help - or I’ll activate the brain trust.