I am using an Asus Laptop with windows 7
Xenyx 502 mixer, uca200 ucontrol interface, and a behringer xm8500 mic
I have my levels in the phones sounding good. Not clipping, 2TR to mix button depressed and Audacity(just downloaded last month). My levels are read by audacity fine.
I record, and unless my gain and EQ on the mixer are turned up to almost max (same with main mix) I get a flat recording line. If run that through normalize, compressor and noise reduction, I get these short little underwater sounds (so it is recording something).
I am trying to record just voice, no other inputs - hoping to use this for some home recording (voice acting) and some podcasting.
My levels are read by audacity fine.
I record, and unless my gain and EQ on the mixer are turned up to almost max (same with main mix) I get a flat recording line.
I’m not sure what’s going on, but if the meters in Audacity show that your levels are OK, you shouldn’t be recording a (nearly) flat line.
EQ isn’t for volume, it’s for shaping the tone/frequency response (bass, treble, etc.). You really shouldn’t be using EQ to get more gain.
If run that through normalize, compressor and noise reduction, I get these short little underwater sounds (so it is recording something).
Normalize simply adjusts the volume. Of course, when you boost the volume you also boost the background noise an that’s why it’s important to record with a good strong signal for a good signal-to-noise ratio.
Compression is generally used to boost the overall-average level without boosting/clipping the peaks. This will also tend to boost the existing background noise.
Noise reduction can sometimes introduce artifacts (side effects) and that’s probably what’s causing the “underwater” sound. Noise reduction works best when you have a tiny-constant background noise… i.e. When you don’t really need it. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease and it’s just something you have to experiment to see what kind of results you can get and then decide of you want to use it or not.
Thanks for the reply - do think I should try not using the mixer and just plugging my mic into the computer? I mean, it’s just a voice track - no live music. But I do plan on adding background music, but that will get done within Audacity - right? Still learning. By doing this, would I be able to tell if the mixer is bad?