Hi everyone. I am recording a history of the Spanish Armada. However I have noticed a very annoying squeak noise that seems to appear at random points in the recording.
I have attached an audacity screen cap, the squeak is in the white section.I have also uploaded the sound file so you can hear it.
One example of the SQUEAK is between the words “Protestant England just recovering from the reign of Bloody Mary SQUEAK was a thorn in deeply Catholic Spain’s side”.
I have done other recordings and noticed similar random squeaks. I am at my wits end as to what causes it and would appreciate the advice and help of people who know better than me.
I record using a Blue Yeti and a pop filter with the gain as low as it will go.
Blue Yeti was purchased in April 2019
Mic is on a steady table
No obvious external source for the squeak
I use the USB cable that it was sold with.
I use Windows 10
I use Audacity 2.3.0
I record using a Blue Yeti and a pop filter with the gain as low as it will go.
Any reason you’re doing that? Typically, home microphones have low volume. If you started there and went down, then you may have some serious noise issues.
When you record cold, your blue wave peaks should occasionally pop up to about 50% or a little lower. The bouncing sound meter should occasionally tint yellow.
I expect your blue waves to not be waves. I think your raw recording looks like a straight line. If it doesn’t look like a straight line, then that may be the first level of the real problem.
I don’t either. There is a very slight and very short high frequency noise between the words “Mary” and “was”, but nothing that I would describe as a “squeak”, and nothing loud enough that I would be concerned about.
A true story: An ex-colleague of mine had a problem like this - he was listening intensely, and each time the recording got to a particular point, he would lean forward and say “… THERE!”, at which point there was a squeak. After considerable giggling, the producer allowed me to fetch a new chair for my colleague - one that didn’t squeak.
the problem would have to be in the monitoring equipment?
I’m not sure where to go with this. Start with my suggestion up the thread of listening to the work on Something Else divorced from your studio.
You can have damage to the blue waves that is both visible and audible and the damage always appears in the same place every time. You can have “magic” damage where it wanders throughout the performance and changes at random.
You apparently have damage fixed in the performance and invisible, and only audible by some listeners.
I asked about a million questions up the thread. It’s probably a good idea to post some of the answers. We have to build your system in our imaginations and the more detail and model numbers, the better.
Several people have said they don’t hear it I think I notice it more because I have noise cancelling headphones. Just out of interest what may be causing that very short high frequency noise in your opinion?
Reducing the pre-amp gain will not help to reduce background noise, in fact it is more likely to make it worse.
It doesn’t help, because you will need to amplify the track to get the voice up to a reasonable level, and amplifying will boost the noise as well as the voice.
It may make it worse, because recording at low level reduces the available dynamic range. At 16 bit, you have about 90 dB before you hit the digital noise. At -24 dB peak, you have 13-bits available, which puts your digital noise floor at around -70 dB. For high quality voice recording, you should be aiming for a noise floor better than -60 dB, but if you are starting off with -70 dB noise before factoring in room tone, microphone self noise, pre-amp noise … then you will be struggling.
In that case, the noise I mentioned in my previous post may be a noise from your apartment.
I’ve had this problem too in home recording. That just comes with the territory. I probably got the squeak from the chair or slight equipment movements on the table.
In case the noise is coming up through the floor, you can try book/towel isolation.
An actual book is recommended. If you don’t have any of those any more, the local library frequently has $2 book sales and my neighborhood has “Free Book” pixie houses along the street.
These microphones are usually at their worst behavior with the volume all the way down. Try a test with the volume at least at 3/4 up. If you’re using noise reduction, you should be able to use less of it.
Yeti microphones are in the sweet spot of being expensive enough to deliver reasonable voice quality, but too cheap to have USB processing and filtering. This can give you the “Yeti Curse” where USB noises make it into the sound.
