maxed out recordings?

Hello all,

I am getting this problem when recording vocals every once in awhile.  It will be recording fine and then at some point in the recording it will max out the sound waves that are visible through AA2.  it will look normal and then bam it hits the cieling.  Very frustrating when you think you finally hit the perfect verse and then you look over and your getting crazy sound half way through the recording.  It sounds like a bunch of satic and very loud.  I am running a alesis mulitmix 8 usb, a perception 200 mic, my hp 120 g hd, 2 g ram.  What could cause this?  oh yeah and you can't tell its doing this when your recording just when the track is played back.  Any help would be appreciated.

Sean

It sounds like it could be a problem with your audio interface to your computer.  Does this happen if you lower the input level to the computer?