Audacity Forum

Do you happen to know what kind of sound file it is?

MediaInfo should tell you.

http://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download

Koz

I'm going to assume you weren't kidding that you're on Windows. Click on the sound file and drag it to the desktop. Right-click > Open With > Audacity. You might be able to do that in one step from iTunes, but this is safer. If Audacity refuses to open it, you might need to install the FFMpeg helper...

I was hoping I could accuse you of recording from your laptop microphone by accident. But you're not using a laptop. This is a full-size PC, right? Two feet (0.6M) tall with noisy fans in the back? I'm running out of juju. The microphone is either massively misadjusted or broken. Let me take this up...

That's a perfect test recording. The system is broken. If that's your normal speaking voice, it's 30dB low. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem, the volume of a voice doubles (and halves) every 6. Your voice would have to double in volume four times to be normal. Your voice is so low...

Unplug your USB sound devices and restart Audacity. It should default to your internal speakers. Also read where Audacity is playing to from the Device Toolbar settings. http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/device_toolbar.html Audacity Recording and Playback can be independent of other players and s...

Did you Export a sound file when you got finished recording? If you did, it will ask you where you want to put the file. I put work like that on my desktop until I figure out where I want to put it during or after production. If all you did was Save the Project, Audacity may have tried to put the sh...

Windows can type special characters by special key presses. Do these work? I assume Notepad, but maybe Word for Windows.
http://www.forlang.wsu.edu/help/keyboards.asp

Koz

When you do a sound test like that, announce the test in what you consider your normal voice and then hold your breath and stop moving for the background sound test. The two tests you provided should work perfectly well given a normal vocal performance. All these tests are comparisons between two di...

USB microphones can go through normal Windows sound services. Is that turned up? It's not likely, but Windows also has Enhanced Services that can occasionally cause troubles. http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_recording_troubleshooting.html#enhancements I had one Windows machine insist on appl...

My only notes aren't applicable to your headset. I have two different headsets and they have an aggressively directional microphone, unlike yours which, according to the instructions is omni-directional. Because of the design of mine, it's possible to be talking into the back of the microphone by ac...