audacity voice recording being weird

[higashi]

When recording myself in audacity, the recording suddenly stops on its own for no apparent reason. (after about 15 seconds)

then when i play it back, the sound is really... off. (i try to sing over songs and my voice ends up being completely off beat)

BTW, before i had this problem, i WAS able to sing without being off beat at all, so its not just that im a crappy singer.

[bry_melvin]

It sounds like something is throwing your latency off. You can find what or you can measure what the latency is and then compensate for it in the settings of audacity.
I can't remeber the exact setting. but you mark one track and then select up to the other and you will have a number at the bottom of audacity showing you the time difference. Do this in a couple of spots and then set an average.