vocals cut in and out

[gebgebgeb]

i already tried search barring this but didnt find anything close to my problem.

it happens at about :13

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4830104/Music/breathelife_sample.mp3

please dont pay attention to the terrible mix and my lame sweeping skills. :edit: also the over use of 808's. my buddy loves them.

when i record vocals with a buddy, for some reason, the vocals cut in and out. its only the vocals and its during random points in time. the recorded files dont look like theres cut's in the audio or anything. the cuts aren't always in the same place. sometimes, ill play back with only like 2 cuts in audio and some times ill play back with 7 or 8 cuts.

im using a shure sm58 into a m-audio fast track pro directly into my computer's motherboard. i guess it could be my motherboard but i record guitars this way and they dont cut in and out. i also thought maybe theres too much going on and my computer can't handle it so i tried removing some extra tracks but that still didnt fix the problem.

my specs are:

asus p5n - d, intel q6600 at 2.40 ghz, 2 gigs of ram =[ and a 320 gig seagate sata hard drive.

any help is appreciated and i apologize for the long post.

 

[gebgebgeb]

le bump

 

[plague_rider]

Wow that is a serious drop-out...

listen to the vocal track on its own... if the raw vocal track does this, then you may have a fault in the recording chain eg, mic connector or cables...

 

[gebgebgeb]

it does cut when i have the vocal track solo'd. im not sure if those could be the causes because the cuts dont always happen in the same place. it seems to me like it would be a computer performance issue or something. maybe i need more ram? i was really hoping this happened to someone else before haha.

 

[J-Mac]

What do you have on the track for inserts? Is it possible you have a demo plug-in on there that has intermittent silence bursts built into it?

 

[Paulie!]

Somekind of clip protection circuit in a piece of gear could cause that, but the vocals didn't seem to be near clipping.. I've also had this happen with an sm58 ripoff mic my old band used for a couple of practices, bad mic-cable connection..

-Paul

 

[Paulie!]

my specs are:

asus p5n - d, intel q6600 at 2.40 ghz, 2 gigs of ram =[ and a 320 gig seagate sata hard drive.

Also, my desktop is a stoneage pos, Pentium 3 at 2.something ghz and 1 gig of ram and I've never had random vocal drop outs with it, so I don't think its the pc.

 

[Fox Mulder]

Check your IRQs, maybe?

 

[Auster]

I second j-mac, check if there is a demo plugin in the chain! Voxengo Voxformer demo did that to me recently...

 

[gebgebgeb]

i'm using a voxengo elephant plugin for vocals because the preamps in my fast track pro are pretty lame. its the demo version so that may be the solution haha. ill take it out of the chain and see what happens.

:edit: problem solved. thanks a lot umf! does anyone know of any other free signal boosting vst's? i have to turn the vocal channels way up in the mix to be able to hear them. maybe i should just buy the pro version of the elephant.

:doubleedit: i looked at how much the elephant cost and i just decided to try using a master limiter instead and it seems to suit my purposes pretty well. if anyone else has a better suggestion then that'd be great.

 

[plague_rider]

I don't know about free signal boosters, but i've heard the PSP Vintage Warmer is a nice plugin for Vox...