I just bought my first semi-professional Mic - a Blue Yeti - and got it in the mail today! All excited, I hooked it up to my 13" Mac Pro and fired up Odacity. All went pretty easy, and I made my first recording. Everything, works fine except the waveform seems pretty weird.
Essentially, it seems the left channel has an asymmetrical waveform while the right channel has a very symmetrical regular looking waveform! In other words, the left channel has a somewhat bottom weighed waveform instead of the typical symmetrical one where both the top and bottom parts look equal.
I have played with several settings on both the Mic and in Odacity - nothing seems to help! Did I get a defective Mic or am I missing something? I pretty new to this - so it’s possible I am missing something obvious!
Note: if I just use the system mic, this doesn’t seem to be a problem.
I bet I’m seeing something you’re not. See that little downhill swoop to the extreme left of the top blue wave. That’s very not right.
See if it does that on another computer. If it does, my opinion is it’s broken. If it clears up on another computer, then it could be a problem with your USB connection. Manufacturers keep making machines cheaper and cheaper and one good place to do that is the USB connection. Would you really know if your USB mouse skipped a beat now and again? Maybe all those typos on the USB keyboard aren’t typos? etc.
Audacity doesn’t do anything to the show when it records, so it’s highly unlikely it can create damage like this.
Also the recording volume is way too loud causing the audio to be clipped. That’s not a fault with the mic, that’s just that you are recording too loud.
Interestingly (badly so) the left (upper) channel is clipped at about 0.4 on the positive side of the waveform. As Koz suggest - check it out on another computer - if the problem is the same there then it’s more than likely a faulty mic.
Thanks a lot guys. You are right kozikowski, that does look pretty weird! Everything happens exactly the same on another computer as well (tired it on a Windows 8 machine.)
I have opened a case with Blue Microphones…we will see what gives. I have a few days to return it to Amazon if they cannot fix it. I will keep you posted.
