Greetings,
 
I use Sonar Artist -- the most recent version -- and have been working on a couple of projects. I'm pretty new to recording.  I have had a strange artifact that has occurred a few different times when I'm recording.  It is intermittent, and I thought I had figured out the source (thinking it was bleed from monitors feedback into the microphone while recording).
 
Anyway, this is a sort of a chirping sound that only occurs while I'm actually making sound.  I have exported a small sample of the audio.  I mention a chord name on the guitar and play the chord.  My voice is being mic'ed with a condenser; the acoustic guitar is being picked up, but not directly mic'ed.  The recording itself was just to record an early demo of a song I'm working on.
 
Anyway, this has occurred when I am trying to track something "real", so I'm trying to figure this out.  
 
I'm hoping that somebody will hear it and know what the problem is.  Any ideas?
 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0hvg1z5b7rxwt3m/Artifact-Track%202.mp3
 
Thanks in advance,
Robert

No idea. It does ride the volume with the audio, though, so that's a clue. It suggests that it's electronic rather than mechanical (e.g. a bad cable, loose connection in the guitar pickup, or a loose element in the condenser). Do you have a gate on your mic, perhaps one built in to the audio interface? What type of interface are you using? Is there a mixer in front of it, or other preamp?

Thanks for the ideas. 
 
The signal chain is: 
 

• Studio Projects C1 microphone
• Hosa PDR-369 Patchbay
• ART PRO MPA-II Preamp
• Samon S-Patch Plus Patchbay
• MOTU AVB Ultralight (interface)
• Sonar Artist 2017.09

 
I can switch out some of this gear and eliminate patchbays, but what I really need to figure out is how to cause it to happen reliably.  The intermittency makes the "swap out until it goes away" strategy challenging to say the least.
 
There should be no guitar pickup involved; though I do leave a guitar plugged into a direct box, fed into the MOTU.  Hypothetically string vibration from my voice could get into the MOTU (maybe)?  But then that would imply some bleed across channels there.
 
Also, I should point out that the MOTU has a mixer built in; I feed the mic back into the headphones for live monitoring -- not necessary with what I was recording -- but I didn't hear that artifact.  This implies to me that it is either in the MOTU (downstream of the send back to the headphones) or actually in Sonar.

First thing I'd do is eliminate all those extra parts of the signal chain.
Plug the mike directly into your interface. 
Not sure why you have the patch bays? Those are not normally put in a vocal mikes pathway and the gear all seems low end. I'll put even money on one of those being the issue. 
 
You need to post the sample on Sound click ,sound cloud or a music share site. Dropbox doesn't work,, it wants me to log on. 

Thanks for your input; I didn't realize one would have to login to Dropbox, so I have posted the sample here: https://soundcloud.com/user-839393163/artifact-track-2
 
Certainly the components are low end; the patch bays are to keep my studio office a bit cleaner.  Removing these items from the signal path as a test certainly makes sense, though the intermittency of the problem makes it hard for any of that to be conclusive, of course without time.  I likely won't have another choice, I suppose the simplest thing will be for me to go straight to the MOTU and see if the problem resurfaces and then at some point go from there.
 
Thanks again.
 
 

At first, I tried listening to the clip on studio monitors but couldn't really hear the artifacts. Using headphones, the low-level clicking/chirping noises can be heard in the background.  Agree with others, it seems like something with the hardware. 
 
Edit: Removed my original paragraph. Can now hear the "chirps" the OP described.
 

Do you wear a wrist watch?
 
It sounds like a recording of a wrist watch through a compressor.
 
Just my first impression,
Paul
 

I wasn't wearing a watch, but that's an interesting idea.  I wish it were happening all the time, then I think it would be easier to figure out.  Thanks.

rwandering
Thanks for your input; I didn't realize one would have to login to Dropbox, so I have posted the sample

Its all good here. I didn't have to log on to hear your sample.
 
I would follow Johnny's idea by removing everything from the signal path and completing tests one by one after adding in gear as you go.
Surely this wont be feasible to record like this but it will help you isolate the offending problem.
Once that is established you can dissect more in to what the root of the problem is. Example: A bad cord, a poor connection, a bad tube in a mic pre amp (Or even a gate shuttering to quickly) possibly a power surge.

Before removing anything from the signal path, I've been focusing on reproducing it first.  Without changing anything at all (not even moving microphones or plugging in/out), I haven't been successful.  
 
The only thing that has definitively "changed" is a restart of the computer (and therefore Sonar and the drivers too) as well as a restart of the MOTU.  I wish I'd had the wherewithal to try some things when it happened last and before shutting down for the night. 
 
I'm certain it will happen again as it has in the past; maybe at that point I'll be able to learn something more.