My laptop is Windows 7 and I’m really new to using Audacity. When I record just acoustic guitar and voice, the playback is fairly clean for about 10 seconds then deteriorates to a mushy/muddy sound. Is this the low quality built-in mic or something I can control with settings of the program or maybe distance from the source.
The built-in microphone, while not winning any awards for quality is probably fine. However it was designed for Skype and voice work not cellos and oboes.
Windows has a system to try and suppress room noise and echoes that tends to destroy instruments. It sees any sustained musical note as “noise.”
You can go into Windows Control Panels and turn off Windows Enhanced Services – and maybe other services.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_recording_troubleshooting.html#enhancements
Koz