I use Garageband 09 to record voice overs via podcasting, female narrator noisy, but keep getting an intermittent clicking sound. It's not the metronome. I have a good quality external USB mic plugged in. Any ideas?

Question

I use GarageBand 09 to record voice overs via the Podcasting then Female Narrator Noisy utility. I have a good quality external mic plugged in. I keep getting an intermittent clicking sound on the audio track. It's not the metronome as that is turned off. I have to edit out the clicking after recording. I can see the spikes on the waveline. Any ideas how I can prevent this happening?

Answer 1

Hi again and thanks so much for replying.
The 'mic jack' on the old mic is both wide and large, measuring about an inch and a quarter from the base (where it comes out of the black encasing) to the edge of the tip (sort of cone shaped). As I can't plug this in directly to any port in the back of the Mac, I thought it might be possible to to buy some sort of adapter so that I could plug in the jack at one end, with a USB connector at the other end to go straight into the Mac. But I see from your comment that you are suggesting a smaller jack itself (i.e., large size jack to small size jack and then plug in to the small round port, instead of jack to USB port)?
At the Mac shop I bought a USB adapter to connect up a second monitor (screen). I've just dug out the package and it's called a mini display port to VGA adapter. But back to the mic issue, I don't want to use the old mic really, I'm just trying to eliminate whether or not my usual mic, or its USB cable, is at fault and causing the clicking.
I looked on Amazon for a suitable adapter but there was mention of these little gadgets having a sound card. As the Mac obviously has its own internal sound card, I couldn't see the point of another (exernal) one, unless it was actually required to convert the sound from input to output (playback) or something. One review said sound quality was lost but the person had a problem with his speakers, not a ticking sound while playing back recordings - which is obviously my problem.
I do have a headset that I used to use for Skype. It has a pink and a green jack. I could plug one into the "headphones symbol' port and try recording again with Garageband. At least the jack is the right size. Again, this is just for the purpose of eliminating whether my good mic on a stand with the anti-popping sheild is at fault.
While my Mac does have both inbuilt speakers (I don't need external ones) and an inbuilt microphone, the latter is not of a high enough quality for voice overs, hence buying an external mic etc. But whatever is causing the clicking or ticking is obviously affecting the quality of my recordings. As you can imagine, it is very time-consuming to edit out the ticking spikes and if the noise appears during speech, you can't edit it out at all.
Please keep the suggestions coming. I am determined to get to the bottom of this for my sake and everyone else who is suffering from the same problem!