Hi, sorry to trouble these forums with this issue. I’m not super familliar with this stuff, so apologies if I get anything wrong. I’ve tried to provide as much info as I can.
I recently bought an ATR2100x microphone from Amazon for voice recording as a replacement for my previous microphone. Everything with setup went well, but I’ve noticed whenever audacity is opened, the volume/sensitivity of my recording alternates. I’m unsure if this is an audacity, windows, or microphone issue.
For instance: when I first open Audacity, the audio peaks at around -6db or higher. When I close and re-open audacity, the microphone becomes extremely quiet, peaking at -18. The recording levels and gain aren’t changed in between sessions. The mic also doesn’t have a gain knob that I am adjusting. (to my knowledge). This happens like clockwork every time I open it, going from very quiet to what I assume is normal)
I don’t have any other recording devices enabled besides the microphone in question. It is set to my default in the windows sound control panel.
The mic is plugged into one of my PC’s USB 3.0 slots.
I’m recording in mono, 2 channel, at 48000Hz, and with a 24-bit sample rate.
I have recording level set to 90.
Changing the recording to 2 channels doesn’t change anything.
I’m running Windows 10 on it’s most recent build
I’m also using Windows WASAPI as my host.
I’m only using the mic with speakers, and no headphones.
Windows sound enchancement settings don’t exist on my microphone, so I don’t think that’s part of it (could be wrong)
(I figured I would add these just in case some setting I messed with was the culprit)
I’ve tried reinstalling audacity and switching around the usb port, but nothing has changed thus far.
Thank you very much! Any help is very much appreciated. I’ll do my best to provide additional information if needed. Sorry for the trouble.
I have one thing you can try. When the microphone is loud, can you make the blue waves go all the way to 100% by speaking loud or yelling? Never, ever blow into a microphone, but you can yell as loud as you want.
Now do it when the microphone is quiet. Do the blue waves stop increasing at 0.5 or 50% no matter how hard you yell?
Hi, thanks for your reply!
I don’t have wired headphones, apologies.
When the mic is loud I can make it go as high as possible - as far into the red as possible to the point of peaking.
When it’s quiet, I can still make it go up very high, but it’s significantly more difficult. I’m not sure if I could max it out, but it definitely can go past 50%.
This problem fails one important Koz-Test. If someone paid me a lot of money to intentionally do this, how would I do it?
I would have bet having an error condition flip like that is not possible.
I’m out. We can wait for a Windows elf to post with ideas.
There is one wacky possibility. You’re not the only user on your machine. You’re the only one on the keyboard, but not the only user changing settings.
I’m not sure if it has to do with my machine, since I’m the only user, and I think the PC is fairly secure. The only thought I can contribute is maybe some kind of setting getting messed up or reset when the app is opened…? Unfortunately I’m too dumb to understand it too much.
This also didn’t happen with my previous microphone.
Actually, there was another roughly similar forum post. “I have an insanely complicated microphone and mixer and an insanely complicated Windows setup.”
“It doesn’t work.”
They tried the Forced Maintenance Gambit. “I’ll just have to stop using Audacity.”
Potential edit that might(?) help. It seems like I was wrong. I don’t think it’s possible to get the blue waves any higher than around this, but the decibels do. regardless of gain or how loud I am, they (the waves) stay very low. Also, changing the recording level at all temporarily fixes it…??? If I adjust the recording level when it is quiet, the waves return to normal. I am beyond confused.
When you post a graphic like that, show the numbers on the left. Without a reference those are just squiggly lines.
I know you want me to, as they say, push a button and the problem goes away, but I think this is a combination problem. The moons and stars lined up the wrong way. Every time you touch something, the problem changes.
A word about measuring sound.
The blue waves on the timeline can only measure about the loudest 25dB or so of the show. 0 is maximum. That range is where most of the production and editing takes place so that works out pretty handy.
The bouncing sound meter comes out of the shrink wrap measuring the loudest 60dB of the sound. That’s a much greater range and you can see things changing and bouncing long after show is so quiet that the blue wave time line has gone into the mud.
This is where you pay attention to the bouncing sound meter numbers. Not just “about half way.” More like “bouncing around -30dB or so.”
On a normal production day, you announce to a bouncing sound meter peaking up around -12dB to -6dB, approximately.
Where the green sound meters just start to turn yellow. Pretend that’s the recording meter doing that…
Can you get your microphone up that far? That circle in with the numbers is an actual volume control. You can make the volume go up and down by shoving that circle around. Most times if you have a fancy microphone or a full mixer or interface, you can leave that circle all the way to the right (loud).
I’m really sorry for not being clear with my image. That was me being stupid.
Talking loudly into the mic when it’s quiet keeps it around -30 to -36, as you said. It won’t go higher unless I yell. If I yell loudly, I can get it -12 or even close to -6.
When the mic is normal I can get it to -6 range while simply talking loudly.
Which Audacity are you using? We’ve been discovering some very serious problems in Audacity 3.6.
I’ve settled on using Audacity 3.4.2 for actual sound production work. It probably wouldn’t be the worst idea to step your machine back to that version and then Tools > Reset Configuration Those are the older, familiar, stable tools and environments.
You can get early Audacity versions from here.
Post back when you backed your machine up that far, or you are already using an early version—and then post which one.
It’s install the version I mentioned (3.4.2) and then Tools > Reset Configuration. In that order. If you don’t do that, then any damage caused by those other upgrades will follow you.
I’m finding if I go up and down between the versions enough times, even the Reset stops working. That’s scary.
Alright, well; thank you very much for your help. I really appreciate it. Sorry for wasting your time. I think I might check if there’s anything wrong with my PC, or look into potentially using a different device.
