Poor audio quality since 3.6 update - please help!

Hello. I tried recording speech into my Blue Yeti mic for the first time today since the Audacity 3.6 update and now:

  1. The playback volume is REALLY low
  2. The sound is not as rich and is now very tinny and echo-ey

I figured out how to fix 1. by turning on ‘normalization’ (no idea why we now need to do this manually though) but please help me to fix 2!

So far, this update has made things worse for me, not better.

Thanks

I don’t like the bright white screen but the biggest problem for me is I can’t see track titles without expanding a given track. I often have 12-16 tracks or more and in previous versions I could see the track title. Not so in 3.6.1 on a Windows computer.

Help!

Laptop? I bet a lot of chocolate you’re not recording the Yeti any more.

Record a little bit and scratch the yeti and then the laptop microphones. Never blow into a microphone. I bet the laptop is way louder.

Go into the Audacity setups and change them to your Yeti.

Koz

Which version worked for you? You can step back to that version while the developers struggle with the current one.

You can get all the old versions of Audacity from here.

After you install it, Tools > Reset Preference.

If your old version didn’t come completely back, there are ways around that, too.

Koz

I tripled-checked and the recording device was set as the Yeti.

How do you want to pay me the chocolate?

Seriously, if anyone can help, please let me know what to do.

Thanks

Since Koz didn’t offer another reply , I tried to find a solution myself but I have not been able to find a suitable one. In Audacity, I tried adjusting the record meter, playback meter, and gain to no avail. I also tried adjusting the gain on my Yeti mic, again to no avail. I still have the same problem: the recorded audio sounds very tinny, like I’m talking on a phone line, and there is a slight echo. The volume is also very “in and out”, i.e. the start of my sentence is very loud but the end of the sentence is very quiet. I am definitely recording into the Yeti and not into the laptop (as Koz suggested) so this problem is a result of the update to Audacity.

I’ll repeat: this update to 3.6 has made things worse for me, not better. I really hope Audacity fix this; in the meantime, I will have to try to to download an older version to see if I can use that.

Koz isn’t on Windows and is right out of his league on this.

This is the section of the manual having to do with installing and removing Audacity. The older installers are called out in this posting a couple of messages up.

I would try Audacity 3.4.2 as a first pass.

https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#How_do_I_install_and_update_Audacity.3F

Koz

Thanks Koz. I’ve downloaded version 3.4.2 and will work with that for now.

Does it work? Does it do what you want without thunder and lightning?

Koz

To be honest, the audio quality is still not as good as it was prior to the 3.6 update. It’s very annoying but I can improve the audio quality in the video editing software I use so I’ve got a workaround.

Disable any “audio enhancements” (both the recording & playback types).

Its not so poor quality using the AI thing but the new recording does cut out parts of my voice in the recording like Top of the Pops records like Top of the Pop.

I am glad I had my Magix on recording as a backup the other day though as Audacity gave another crash log on a 2 hours recording again.

Recording in a moving the mouse environment works fine but it’s useless having to move the mouse for 2 hours just to record a long show.

The S removal is a bit annoying and is the poor recording quality I get even with the AI but I’m bugged more with long recordings crashing and they still haven’t released the bug fix release when it’s a crisis for someone who gets a lot of hiss through the 3.5mm jack input itself we can’t exactly downgrade or we’ll have no AI.

What AI thing?

If parts of your words are getting cut off during recording then your computer probably has “audio enhancements” enabled (see the post right before yours for a link with details).

This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.