There are two fuzzes. There is distortion which an old supervisor called putting “hair on the audio.” Then there’s straight noise sometimes called white or pink noise. That’s ffffffffffff when you stop talking. Which one do you have?
Internal soundcards have an uphill battle. They have to work in a hot, uncomfortable environment right next to noisy, buzzy digital electronics. They warn you when you build your own computer that you can’t get the video and audio cards far enough apart.
So no, nobody is shocked that you’re unable to get a perfect voice from your system. Which problem do you have?
As much as everyone would like to put little pieces of sticky tape at the right settings, you really need to use the Audacity tools designed to set sound levels.
When you record, you get a collection of blue waves and a bouncing red sound meter. The red meters should bounce in the -6 range and never go all the way up to zero. The blue waves should never go all the way up to 100% (1.0).
If you go too high, the sound will get distorted, harsh and crunchy. If you record too low, the natural hiss of the sound system will be too loud. I’m guessing that’s what you have.
If your meters are too small to see, you can make them bigger (highly recommended) by clicking on the right-hand edge and dragging sideways. The other tools will get out of the way.
Live recording is frequently a shock to people accustomed to highly processed professional and commercial recordings. It’s a lot more wild and woolie and hard to control.
Some soundcards have a setting for weak microphones called the 20dB Boost. You might look for that and see if that makes any difference.
As a last resort, you can try gentle noise reduction, but hiss is very difficult to remove from a show. Let’s get your recording levels right first. There’s nothing like fighting multiple contradictory symptoms at once.
Presumably you have a cheap computer mic? Decent mics cost $$$ and aren’t even suitable for connecting to an unbalanced (noisy) computer mic input.
You missed out the information requested in the pink panel at the top of the page. Try going into the Windows sound control panels and see if there is a boost or AGC control for the mic that you can turn off. It may be behind an “Advanced” button. Then get closer to the mic and turn the input volume up in Audacity.
For about $100 USD you can get a “podcast” USB mic. A popular example is the [u]Blue Yetti[/u]. A USB mic bypasses the “useless” microphone input on your computer. (I don’t own a Blue Yetti, but it has a good reputation. There are other similar mics available.)
With a mic like this, room noise, room acoustics, and the “performance” will generally be the limiting factors, rather than the quality of the mic & soundcard.
And a “podcast” or “studio style” USB mic is about the same price as a similar analog studio or stage mic, but you don’t have to buy a separate audio interface with like you’d need with a studio/stage mic. So you are essentially getting the USB interface free.
The only Logic 3 mic I can see online is a USB mic, so as you are connecting to the pink mic input I don’t really know what mic you have. Any mic meant for connecting to the pink mic input on a computer can be safely regarded as noisy.
The noise sounded to me like microphone boost. Did you check that boost wasn’t on? Look at Missing features - Audacity Support . Press “Volume” in the “Sound recording” section, then look for your mic. Click on the “Advanced” button if there is one.
A ZIP file is not an installer. What you could do is open the Windows Control Panel and uninstall Audacity 1.3.14 if it is listed there. That does not affect 2.0.5 in any way. See How to change or remove a program in Windows XP .
Pick a web page that shows your microphone. All the pages I see are for USB microphones and they won’t plug into the pink socket of a soundcard.
The sound is awful. There’s something very serious wrong. Normal microphone problems don’t produce that honky, talking into a bucket sound with hiss behind it.
If the Pioneer mic input is suitable for your mic it probably won’t make any difference, unless Pioneer connects to the computer via USB and the source of the noise is the motherboard audio (or unless “mic boost” is the problem).
So are you still connecting the mic to the pink mic input on the computer? Or was the mic connected to the Pioneer?
The sample you posted before was really poor, so it would be better to fix the problem, ideally. Most Noise Removal also damages the audio to some extent, so the trick is to remove as much noise as you can without being able to hear degradation in the sound.
It would be a good idea to go into the Windows “Sounds and Audio Devices” control panel and look at all the options for the mic.
