This is my proposed equipment list. It’s a full-on condenser microphone into a real, well-behaved MicPre/Digitizer. It uses a 5 foot microphone cable and comes with a substantial stand. This is the stand I have. I bought the heavier version because I have no idea which microphones I’m going to be using, and wouldn’t it be awkward if the stand dumped the microphone on the floor?
There is one shortcoming. There’s no way to put vibration filtering in this system other than put towels under the three legs of the tripod.
There is no pop and blast filter in this list. If you don’t pop your P sounds or get too close, you may not need it. It can be added later.
This is the bottom-scraper list other than the tripod. I know of no other way to get this style equipment any cheaper and still maintain conventional brand names and availability.
Please note the microphone comes in a “U” version. It’s a USB microphone like your snowball instead of analog. I know nothing about it.
What happened when you temporarily substituted your printer USB cable on your Snowball? We may be able to take this home for the price of a good quality non-broken USB cable.
Sorry for my absence. My other performance job took me traveling on some gigs.
I’ve recorded a sample with another USB cable. It’s with my fiance rather than me, as I had an author looking for a male narrator. It almost looks like this sample is worse than the others.
Thank you for the product list. I’m not sure if the tripod will fit into the small recording space I’ve constructed. I’ve been looking at scissor arms to see if that would work. I’ve put off the other projects until early next year in order to get new hardware and work out a mastering process.
I heard such good things about Sweetwater, I could potentially contact them and have them guide me in the right direction, based on what kind of budget I can scrape together.
I had some “juju” left at Sweetwater after some purchase adjustments, so I bought a C-1 microphone to go with the UM-2 preamp and digitizer. Gale noticed some blue wave damage that the system produced and I haven’t blasted free enough time to investigate. I know you have a lot of free time, right?
I did get some good results with a rock band dynamic (moving coil) microphone. I have an EM-58 instead of SM-58. It’s cheaper. Both should work. None of them have any of the problems of USB microphones.
The scissor “work light” mount that you clamp to the table should work as long as it holds the mic up. Many of these microphone holders will pick up noise from the desk or floor and need to be isolated. You should keep that in the back of your mind. I have a quiet, single level house, so I have no downstairs neighbors.
I could potentially contact them and have them guide me in the right direction
Yes, but I predict they’re going to point you to the wonders of the Blue Yeti, a cousin to the Snowball. The Yeti is remarkably successful for a large segment of the announcing public. You are expected to set up your Yeti, announce several successful audiobooks and retire to a small village on Majorca.
But not everybody can get it to work and it can have many of the same problems the Snowball does. I’d be shocked if they didn’t have the same electronics inside.
I’ve just hooked up a new AT2020. Other new things include a scissor arm attached to the small table I use (which is cushioned on top and underneath), shock mount, and a foam windscreen/cover, also made by AT. My booth space also has added insulation to keep outside room noises where they belong: outside.
Before I run around in Audacity messing with mastering stuff I only know small amounts about, I’d like to run this by you first. I don’t have my good headphones with me, so I’m unsure if the header contains my own footsteps as I approach the booth. I’ve edited out my entry/rustling and, of course, cut straight to the voice. If the header silence is bad, the tail should have decent standing silence which represents what the mic pics up with no movement/breathing.
Has this improved things? If so, do you have suggestions for the best way to get to ACX specifications without overdoing it?
When you recorded this clip, I hear you clearly walking across the floor and then start talking. I didn’t hear any doors closing. The portion of the clip after 12 seconds features too much non-microphone noise. It sounds for all the world like a freeway recording I did a while back.
I hear the pure sharp hiss the microphone is making, too. That doesn’t bother me.
I can force this to work as it is, but I have use a lot of noise suppression to get there. Your little studio does have a door, right?
What kind of computer have you got? Are we listening to the computer fans? Are you in a part of the country that’s currently experiencing Severe Heating Weather? Is that furnace fans?
I produced a test clip comparing the type of microphone noise I’m expecting (first two seconds) to the actual noise you have. The volumes aren’t natural. I boosted them so you can hear what’s going on. But even in its natural state, it’s till too loud.
I’m sorry, but this is now starting to make me furious. I don’t know what else I can do.
There is no logical reason for the excessive amount of noise you’re outlining. The space where the microphone is being housed is a pop-up portable closet with a zippered closure which many other narrators seem to use with much success. I edited out the time I spent entering and closing the flaps, which produces distinct rustling and zipper sounds. It’s now (as opposed to previous clips I’ve posted) covered in two heavy woven moving quilts, with 2-3 inches of padding both below the booth between it and the floor, and above (on the top of the booth).
I’m 3 stories up. There is no furnace near me, as it’s all in the basement. I think the lower floors have baseboard heating. There is a gas heater in my apartment which only had the pilot running during this recording. No weather conditions. The computer fan is both not running and far away and outside the enclosure during this recording.
As stated a while back, I’m running this on a Macbook c. 2009 which has now been upgraded to El Capitan. Audacity is 2.1.1. The chord is BRAND NEW because the microphone is BRAND NEW.
The most obvious thing about that recording is that your voice is very quiet.
I’ve not read through this long thread, but the steps to fix that are:
Speak up - project your voice. I don’t mean “shout”, I mean, imagine that you are talking to your audience, not whispering into a microphone.
Get closer to the mic. If you want that “close up and intimate” type of sound, get close to the mic.
If necessary after 1) and 2), turn up the recording level a bit.
Your recording can safely be 20 dB louder. If you can achieve that it will make an enormous difference to the “signal to noise ratio” (much less noise compared to signal).
Attached (at bottom) is a screen shot of what your blue waves look like. This is what they’re supposed to look like:
Also note my bouncing sound meter is around -6. Yours isn’t. Yours bounces in the -24 range. Sound goes half and double every 6, so your sound is three times lower volume than the target recording volume.
You are recording very low volume and it’s making what room noise you have appear worse. Once you record a non-optimum performance, your only option is filters and effects to try and make up the difference between what you shot and what ACX is expecting. You can’t reach over and turn up the volume on the microphone. Most USB microphones don’t have performance volume controls.
In your case, I boosted the clip volume and that boosted the room noise, too. Then I applied noise reduction and that left me with a recording whose volume was in violation. Boost the volume…etc, etc, etc, chasing tail.
I have produced several recordings in my third bedroom that I made ACX complaint with a volume change here and there. Recording standard is sound meter peaks in the -6 range and ACX standard is -3. Small potatoes. Read the script, change the volume slightly and out the door. But I wasn’t using a USB microphone.
USB microphones record low volume. It is to the manufacturer’s benefit to do that. They get fewer complaints and returns with a slightly quiet microphone. However, you can make the production much worse by recording a thin voice quietly. How far are you from the microphone? My recordings were made with a separation about 8" and I have a voice that will cause bodily injury at close range.
You don’t have to keep cycling through the forum to get the news. Audacity provides blue waves and the bouncing sound meter so you can diagnose your own shoot.
I found it useful to define the system during problems. Can you overload it? Normal recording sound peaks at -6 (desirable) is not that far from overload and sound damage. Can you make it break? Can you speak so loud that the sound meter goes all the way up and turns red?
Yes, I know. Diagnosing difficult problems on the forum is like trying to drive a truck through rubber bands on the steering wheel.
You can get Audacity to wake up and tell you what the sound levels are without going into full record. Control-Click on the recording meters > Start Monitoring. If everything is connected, they should start bouncing and respond to your voice. Then you can test, adjust, change, etc and see in real time the result.
You don’t need the sound proof room for this. We’re talking about major, serious volume changes. Set up the microphone in front of the Mac.
I know people that have never seen the sound meters or blue waves during the recording of their show. Like USB microphones, all’s fine as long as nothing goes wrong.
These are all connected. I can make a good recording out of your performance without the room noise. If you were much louder, the room noise would be irrelevant.
That’s why ACX has a robot monitoring submissions. People who can’t hit noise, volume and overload specifications in the same recording are semi-automatically rejected. It’s not particularly easy to shoot a good voice track.
It’s much less than “three time”. As you say, sound goes half/double every 6 dB (double every +6 dB, half every -6 dB). So if the target level is -6 dB, and nuvola09’s level is about -24 dB, then that is 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 of the target level. In other words 8 times too low.
I may have said this already. The longest message thread on the forum, 39 chapters, is from Ian who just wanted to shoot audiobooks in his Hollywood apartment with a USB Blue Snowball microphone.
The AT2020 is a side-address microphone. You should be speaking into the AudioTechnica nameplate, not the top. I just noticed the rear has a tiny label “BACK.”
Oh, and the foam sock is not made by AT which is why I couldn’t find it. It helps with wind, but also makes the performance slightly less sharp which is desirable in this case.
