Muffled voice when using Audacity

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hello there.

I’m a new user to Audacity who recently downloaded it in hopes of practicing “voice over” work. I’m a total noob when it comes to things like this… electronics and computers. I know something’s… not a lot, so let me begin with what I do know.

I am using a laptop.
ACER ASPIRE 7736
Windows 7
Audacity 2.1

I don’t know if it has a soundcard which I’ve read you’d need one in order to record sounds on any computer.

As for a mic, well here’s where I guess I fail. I have a cruddy usb mic from a video game that I can use and it does record, but the quality is just awful. So I decided to try using my GOLD PS4 HEADSET which is the best quality mic I have. It sounds way better than the usb mic… but I’m not sure if I should go an alternative route.

When I try messing with Audacity, I have to talk very loud for it to pick up my voice. Even with this being done, I sound muffled. So I started messing with the “effects” drop down menu and started tweaking different things. I can see a slight difference with eliminating background noise, but I just want decent clarity. Is there something in specific I have to toggle in order to achieve this?

I’m sorry if people have asked similar questions already. I tried researching this on “GOOGLE,” but I came up shorthanded. Anything advice would help and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read this post. If you need additional information, please let me know.

2

Step one might be to make sure you’re recording from the right microphone. It seems stupid, but this isn’t a newbie problem. I set up a terrific podcast system and everything worked perfectly, except some people couldn’t hear my music. Turned out, I was using the laptop built-in microphone instead of the podcasting mixer—and it took days to figure it out.

While you’re recording, scratch each microphone and announce what you’re doing. The active microphone will be tons louder than the others.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/ScratchTest2.wav

Koz

3

I’m sorry for the late reply. I was at work yesterday till the night and I forgot about my topic till I checked my email. It’s a brilliant reply. I’m amazed at how simple things you’d least suspect might be the cause of such… bigger things. I’m going to try this method and reply back with my findings. Thank you very much for the suggestion! I’m very grateful for your assistance. Well until next time Koz, be safe and thanks again!
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