I am recording form my kitchen table using Audacity 2.2.2, a usb mic and a pop filter. I still get a lot of “esses” and I’ve been using a De-Esser plugin to help with that, but it sounds like i’m in a box or something. Is there any way to correct that without spending a mint on a soundproofing kit? Please listen to the attached example, and toss me a recommendation,
We need to know the microphone.
The bumps at 4 seconds and 8 seconds are “P Popping.” You’re using a pop filter???
How far from the microphone are you? With a good pop filter, you should be about a power fist.
You can also go a very long way by putting the microphone off the left or right corner of your mouth instead of right in front of your nose.
The room is too noisy. I couldn’t get the Noise Reduction tools to do enough work. Being a kitchen also gives you echoes, although if you hadn’t called my attention to it, you might have gotten by.
There are tricks.
Forget the computer and all. Note the furniture moving pad on the table.
Put one on the floor too. Lots of towels will work. Arrange yourself so a corner of the room is behind and in front. That will help with multiple bouncing echoes.
Unplug the fridge or whatever is making noise in the background. If you can tell if the fridge (or your computer) is on just by listening, it needs to go during a performance.
Make sure you turn off Windows voice processing. This is where to find the settings even if you don’t have problems that bad.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_recording_troubleshooting.html#enhancements
A kitchen is an aggressively hostile place to record your voice, so this will take work. You can’t pick a nice bedroom?
Koz
Popping “P” sounds are by far the worst problem. Second place is the fridge motor. The “box” reverb from the room is in last place …