Claim: Alien Implants are Causing Whitley Strieber's Microphone to Glitch Out

[SkepticSteve]

Whitley Strieber hypothesizes that alien implants within his body are causing his microphone to glitch out repeatingly on his show:



The noise gets worse over the course of the show, additionally giving rise to another echo superimposed on the audio track:




Alledgly being "independent of the setup" which Whitley is using. I suppose though it is more likely to assume that this is just some old components in the microphone overheating (that's why the static noise) and malfunctioning in the course of it (giving rise to the echo).

 

[NorCal Dave]

Trying to remember my younger church going days, I used to do a lot of the audio set up for the preacher and singing groups. I don't recall exactly, but I thought that sound had something to do with using balanced and unbalanced signals. He has a fancy mike with what looks like an XLR balanced cable connected to it:

Balanced audio

is a method of interconnecting audio equipment using balanced interfaces. This type of connection is very important in sound recording and production because it allows the use of long cables while reducing susceptibility to external noise caused by electromagnetic interference. The balanced interface guarantees that induced noise appears as common-mode voltages at the receiver which can be rejected by a differential device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_audio

Balanced connections are absolutely essential for microphone level signals, which are only small numbers of millivolts. The large electrical gain applied to the signal in a microphone pre-amplifier will amplify any induced noise along with the wanted signal, making it a significant problem. The same balancing approach is used for line level signals in professional applications, using the same cables and connectors.

https://www.soundguys.com/balanced-vs-unbalanced-connections-60085/

Here are the different cables often used. The ones on the left are balanced:

Maybe he's just plugging his balanced XLR cable into an unbalanced cable to connect to his computer or recording device?

I also found this on a recording forum, noting that the software can be the problem:

Crackling when recording mostly comes with latency problems. Be sure to have the latest drivers from behringer. Try a higher buffer setting and/or try asio4all drivers (if they still can be found).

I tell you, 80% of my past problems where comming from the computer. Wrong audio driver, wrong video drivers (yes it can make a difference) chipset and sata controler are very critical.

Then audio drivers and ajustments are the most common problems happening. Did you check the audio settings
How to set up Audacity - Audacity Manual, check different audio drivers MME, WDM, Asio..

I don't use Audacity.. but there must be a place where you setup the sample rate and buffers..

Now time to throw us some specs.. laptop, desktop, CPU, Mem, HDD speed. Is it full or fragmented.. Everything counts !!!thumb

https://recording.org/forum/recording-live-or-studio/crackling-sound-during-recording

In short, lot's of other things besides Alien Implants.

 

[GeekFurious]

I used to podcast regularly and this would sometimes happen to me. It was almost always a software/driver problem and not related to the physical connections.