After Recording to Audacity, quality is awful.

Hello, After I finish recording from my microphone to audacity, the quality is really bad and I thought the microphone was defective. Turns out, after you export the recording, the audio quality is back to normal which bugs me because that means I have to record, export, import, and play instead of having to record and then play. Please fix this as I almost bought a new microphone thinking this one was defective. I am using the Blue Snowball ICE on Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit.

If this was a known problem, then Audacity would not have been released. So as we are dealing with an unknown problem, perhaps you can try and help us identify it.

Which version of Audacity are you using?
What operating system are you using?
In what way is the sound “awful”?

Thanks for responding!

I use Audacity 2.2.1

I use Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit

The sound was very soft and muddy when I finish recording audio and playing it back. The problem seems to go away after the audio gets exported in which the audio is just fine. I was annoyed with this because I had to record, export, import, and listen to the audio. If this problem didn’t exist, I could just record and listen to the audio so I don’t have to do the other steps and edit audio faster. The sample rate for both the microphone and the project is 48khz. As i said in my main post, I almost had to buy a new microphone because I thought it was defective after only a short period of time.

What’s the sound system like? Does it happen if you listen on headphones? Can you as a test?

Koz

What’s the show? Are you speaking, singing, playing an instrument?

Koz

One more. Make a bad recording. Unplug the Snowball and play it again. Better? Did it change?

Koz

The problem goes away after the file is exported.

The problem goes away after the file is exported.

We got that, but that’s totally not normal, so we need you to do experiments while it’s still broken, before you export it.

Go back over that list. Does a muffled track clear up if you disconnect the snowball? Use earphones, etc.

Koz