audio recording

[thannes]

Hello, I'm new at this. After recording my voice for an audio file, I'm listening to it and parts are all garbled. words missing, words on top of each other. it sounds awful. 

Why is the sound also distorted once I move the audio file to a multi track session so I can add music? What service can take my two files, audio and music and turn it into something that sounds good for a podcast?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

You're going to have to provide quite a bit more information before we can figure out what's happening. Mac or a PC? And can you tell us how you've recorded this in the first place? From what you are saying it sounds like a Waveform view recording that you are trying to import into Multitrack view. How have you got the session set up? What sound device do you have, and have you tried playing anything else in Multitrack? If you get garbled sound, often it means that the buffer size is too small - you can adjust this in Preferences and the Audio Hardware settings. Depending on the driver you are using (what device class is it?) this can be called either latency or I/O buffer size, if it's ASIO.

[thannes]

thank you so much. PC. I recorded in adobe audition by doing file, new, audio file. I hit the red button and talked for around 30 minutes. Most of it sounds perfect but then after about half way through it is all garbled in spots. Kind of like a bad phone connection. It's garbled in both the multitrack editor and waveform editor. I also saved the multi track as an mp3 which also sounds like garbage. I did this because my headphones are inconsistent. I set up the multitrack in a podcast template (that I did not create). I did a multitrack once before and it worked fine. The prior recording was done the same and did not have this issue. It's so inconsistent to happen in a few places and not the entire thing? I'm sorry, I don't know what device class, latency or i/o buffer or asio means. I'm so sorry. I really appreciate your help. 

[thannes]

I should also add that it is garbled alone and also in the multi track. 

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Sounds as though you might have a temp file problem. You might need to resite the temp file location in a different place, and not the default location, which it shares with the OS, and that's not good. I think this, because in Waveform view, everything gets recorded to a temp file before you save it, and that's the only place it can really go wrong. In future, you might like to consider recording in Multitrack view, where your recording is written directly to a file, which avoids this sort of problem completely. Since Multitrack is essentially only a file player (rather a posh one) then it's inevitable that the file will sound the same in that as well.

Ideally, don't use the Podacast template - beginners have run into some terrible problems because of it, and its weird settings that really only apply to the person creating it, and not anybody else, as far as we can make out. Using the default template is actually a lot safer, in terms of getting an acceptable result.

Ultimately, you may well have to learn a bit more about what your computer's doing if you are going to get the best out of it. Windows as installed really isn't optimised for audio - there are websites around that can help you with this though - just google 'optimising PC for audio use' and you'll find quite a lot of stuff that can make a material difference to its performance.

[thannes]

I really appreciate your reply. I'm not sure how to resite the temp file location. Does this mean my track is toast? I will google for instructions on your recommendations. If you think my file is toast, I'll face it and move on. LOL.

[thannes]

OMG. THANK YOU SO MUCH. I THINK I'VE GOT IT!