Recording FaceTime Audio Sounds Garble-y

[hapa17]

ok, this is a VERY specific question. maybe someone smarter than me or who has somehow been in the same situation can help.

i'm trying to record a phone interview that i'm placing through my hackintosh (via handoff with my phone). i had it all set up with a program called Loopback to route audio from my headphones and the facetime app so that i could record it in Quicktime. i tested it once last week, all worked perfectly.

then i updated to Catalina over the weekend.

now, when i try the same thing in catalina, the other caller's audio sounds like it's slowed down and garble-y when recording. the audio actually sounds fine before i hit record, but turns to $hit after i hit record. my audio sounds fine. i tried recording youtube audio. that sounds fine. it's only facetime audio when recording. i even tried another app by the same company that is a more direct solution: Audio Hijack. you can layer the system audio and record all from one app. same problem.

here's a sample. that's me in the beginning saying "hello," sounds fine. then the garble sounding stuff is a recording i called in to.

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when i try the same setup from my real macbook pro on catalina, it works fine. so this is some kind of weird hackintosh problem.

can anyone help?

 

[hapa17]

ok, after hours of playing around with it, i figured out that my usb webcam was somehow affecting my setup. if i unplug the usb webcam, then the recorded audio for facetime calls becomes normal again. i still would appreciate it if someone were to figure out why that may be, and if there's a fix to it besides me having to unplug my webcam.

however, unplugging the webcam is a minor annoyance, so no big deal even if no one has any thoughts. thanks.

 

[hapa17]

might it be some kind of issue with my usb setup that would cause this? is there any nuance to usb setup these days? i feel like my usb ports have mostly always just worked.