Lately I’ve been picking up an audible ‘rumble’ in the background when I record soft passages. It sounds like a mic that’s over modulating as the sound resembles amplified background noise…but I don’t have a microphone on my computer so it’s not that.
I’m not clipping so that’s not the source and since the passages are very low/soft the volume of the music is low but the ‘rumble’ is so loud that the music is unusable.
Windows 10 machine…Audacity 2.4.2. I’ve tried using MME and WASAPI and the results are the same…
Also…I’ve noticed at times in louder passages I’m picking up some distortion on playback…even though I’m not over driving the levels into clipping. It’s just not as noticeable as it is on softer passages…but it tells me that I have some noise issues across the entire volume spectrum…
It’s not the playback because I can open and play a known good song and there is no distortion or rumble…it is definitely a recording issue…
Does anyone have any ideas on why this is happening? Thanx
Streaming audio of any type…If I record off a Youtube or if I play using Windows Media Player or my onboard music player “Groove Music”…doesn’t matter. The initial/source playback sounds fine but when I listen to the recording made by Audacity I get that annoying background rumble… It reminds me of a microphone being gained up to capture a faint source and you get background white noise…OR it almost sounds like some type of feedback loop… It is maddening…
After experimenting I found a rather strange combination of software and hardware.
My computer uses Realtek audio for playback playing through a set of Altec speakers and sub. When I stream and play the source at mid to low volume the audio sounds fine. But when I record and play back the Audacity recording I get that annoying sound.
So, I decided to test what would happen with headphones… Surprisingly both the source AND the Audacity recording played just fine. I swapped out the headphones and connected a second set of speakers (cheap) and again both play fine.
Testing further I found that if I crank the volume up to max when playing the source I can hear an audible background noise but it is low and almost inaudible at mid to lower volumes…but listening closely I can hear it…and the more I turn up the volume the more audible it becomes.
It doesn’t do that with headphones or the cheap speakers…
I’m guessing I have a capacitor going out in my Altec playback hardware some place…But I can’t figure out why the source playing on the Altecs is sounds so much better than the Audacity recording which sounds so much worse… This is really a head scratcher…
Jademan…thinking on your comments and being unable to find the tab you mentioned I went into my sound card settings and found a radio button to select something Realtek calls “Stereo Mix” under input devices…It was set to on so I disabled it and initial tests suggest that made a difference…right now my ear is so fatigued from listening I’m not sure how much better it actually is…Haha… I’ll play with it a couple of days and see how it goes…but I still don’t understand why the booming would occur in Audacity playback only…and only through speakers…
When I type in “mmsys.cpl” and the “Sound” box pops up there is no “Levels” tab…are you speaking of levels in another location?
Also…here’s something interesting to my novice mind… When that “Sound” box pops up after typing in “mmsys.cpl” I have 2 entries showing up in the “Recording” tab: “Microphone” which shows “Not plugged in”…and “Stereo Mix” which shows up as “Disabled” since I unchecked that box as I mentioned in my previous response…
Should there be some other form of recording device showing up in the “Recording” tab?
One more thing…as I was poking about in my sounds area in “Settings” I noticed that 2 output devices were present. The Realtek Audioone and “NVidia High Definition Audio” which is tied to my monitor speakers (not used)…I set that back to my Realtek/speakers setting and disabled the NVidia one… I suppose that could have been causing problems…
So, try this:
In the Recording tab, click on that Microphone, then click on properties, then a whole new window pops up with a whole new set of tabs. Do you see Levels and Enhancements tabs there?
In the properties ‘box’ that pops up for the microphone it only has 1 tab…“General”…and under its properties it has 4 tabs “General”, “Driver”, “Details”, and “Events”…
All that being said…I’m noticing that the rumble/booming has abated…Not sure what, if anything, I did made a difference though…
