Hi! I just brought a new mic (Blue Snowball Ice) and it’s supposed to have a good audio quality for recording music covers (I’ve tested it with another software, Mixcraft, and the quality is actually amazing), but everytime I record on Audacity, it gets… Really bad for some reason. It doesn’t record my high notes and it sounds like I’m stuck inside a box, but with Mixcraft I don’t have this problem. Mixcraft is paid though and I prefer to keep using Audacity. I’ve tried going through the settings, but it still sounds bad. Can someone help? What do you guys think it’s happening, what’s the difference? There’s a latency issue as well that I’ve learned how to solve manually but in the past I didn’t use to have at all. Actually, I’ve been an Audacity user for years and in the past I didn’t have any of this issues?
My current settings:
Windows WASAPI, Blue Snowball + Realtek Audio Headphone
48000 hz
Windows “audio enhancement” off?
EDIT: it seems the quality has improved somehow, but Audacity is now automatically pitching up my voice when I overdub
If it’s a small pitch change it MIGHT be your soundcard. The mic and soundcard each have their own clock (oscillator) that generates the sample rate (48kHz, etc.). If the soundcard’s clock is slightly fast then it will play back faster at a higher pitch (or vice-versa). …And the tracks will never match. No clock is perfect but a “consumer soundcard” is sometimes off by enough to cause trouble for musicians.
If you record and play-back on the same device, everything will be OK until you play it on a different computer or different device. And even then you probably won’t notice unless you are trying to play-along with a properly tuned instrument.
If that’s the problem there’s no easy solution other than getting a good audio interface to use instead of your soundcard.
You might be able to test it by generating a 440Hz ‘A’ tone and compare it to whatever properly-tuned instrument you have. The generated tone will be digitally perfect so any difference comes from the soundcard.