crazy silent wave ruining my recordings

[Unclejohnny]

I make simple recordings of my voice for on-hold messages using a condenser mic, interface, laptop & adobe audition. An insane wave has invaded my recordings.
The large waves you see in the attached picture seem to come from nowhere and make no sound on playback. If I am speaking when one pops up, the sound gets laid onto the contour of the phantom wave. If the wave is mild it plays back alright. When the wave is real steep, any sound recorded over it drops way down or breaks up.

I can make the errant wave vanish using the noise print/noise reduction function but if there were any noticeable drops in sound level from recording during the silent wave, they remain.

I already defragged my PC, optimized it for recording and reinstalled the interface's driver, and when I made the recording in the picture, I was using drastic low end cut in case monster subs in a neighbor's apartment or car were causing the problem. But there it is.

The recording in the image is me sitting in a quiet room watching the freaky wave form happen and feeling puzzled. I captured one or two random house noises and you can see where they are by looking at the spectral view. Everything else was silence in the room and plays back as silence even with the line jumping up and down like that.

Any suggestions? (I attached an mp3)

 

[gecko zzed]

Interesting and perplexing. The shape of those bumps is typical of low frequency noise, but it doesn't sound like it. Do you get the same spikes when there is no mike plugged in? Or when the preamp gain is turned right down?

 

[Unclejohnny]

Interesting and perplexing. The shape of those bumps is typical of low frequency noise, but it doesn't sound like it. Do you get the same spikes when there is no mike plugged in? Or when the preamp gain is turned right down?

Grest question, gecko. I'll find out. Next time it's going on, I'll turn down the preamp gain and another time I'll unplug the mic (just noticed something inside it is rattling ).
Somebody said it looks like it's the zero crossing that's convoluting and maybe there's a problem with the power coming out of the USB port.

 

[ritb]

change the mic john and see if the problem is gone.

 

[guitarplayr82]

Grest question, gecko. I'll find out. Next time it's going on, I'll turn down the preamp gain and another time I'll unplug the mic (just noticed something inside it is rattling ).
Somebody said it looks like it's the zero crossing that's convoluting and maybe there's a problem with the power coming out of the USB port.

You should probably turn off phantom power before you unplug the mic just to be safe