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My usb microphone appears to be dropping samples, producing very glitchy recordings which are about 5% shorter than they should be. Here's an example recording of a periodic wave:

440 Hz test tone

You can clearly see pieces of the wave missing. This happens using both arecord and SoX's "rec" command, at all bit depths and sampling rates.

[Edit:] The glitches are irregularly spaced from between 5-100 ms apart, and happen at all amplitudes, bit depths, and sampling rates. I have the latest firmware, updated today.

Any ideas about where to start troubleshooting this?

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  • Are you running the latest firmware? Older firmwares produced glitchy, unusable data from USB DACs I tried them with.
    – scruss
    Commented Dec 16, 2012 at 16:19
  • I updated again just now to verify - no change.
    – meetar
    Commented Dec 17, 2012 at 21:36

3 Answers 3

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I looked at this question the other day but your image was missing. Looking at it now, it's clear your waveform is being "snipped" in places.

I've had similar problems - audio loss during mic recordings - when the gain was set too high in alsamixer; check your levels. Clipping could be the culprit of this problem.

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  • The glitch is constant, and happens at all amplitudes. The wave in the image above is at about -24db.
    – meetar
    Commented Dec 17, 2012 at 21:37
  • If your capture device supports DB boost, set it to zero. Failing that, look for some better drivers (preferably from the manufacturers website).
    – Munkeh
    Commented Dec 18, 2012 at 13:23
  • DB boost is already at 0 in alsamixer. The manufacturer doesn't offer drivers - it's a Samson Go USB mic, advertised as "plug-and-play." I'll try looking for other drivers elsewhere.
    – meetar
    Commented Dec 20, 2012 at 0:05
  • That's a condenser mic, which will probably require a bit more power. Are you using a USB hub? If not, I would advise doing so as the Pi power supply won't be enough
    – Munkeh
    Commented Dec 20, 2012 at 12:45
  • I'm not using a hub - I'll try to round one up, and try again.
    – meetar
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 16:35
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Just had a look at the waveform in the picture and it looks like it coould be missing samples possibly due to the processor having to perform other tasks (multi-tasking) and taking time-out to service an interrupt or another process.

You could try temporarily shutting-down other services while making recordings and see if that helps. My first target would be any internet conectivity as this might be connecting peridically as a background task and interrupting your recording software.

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In case someone has a similar issue.

I have measured the exact same behaviour with my Samson GoMic USB microphone. The issue could be completely resolved, by using a modified kernel. There is a comfortable way to do this:

sudo BRANCH=fiq_split rpi-update

You can find out more about it here

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