I installed Audacity on a new laptop and wanted to record a keyboard. But the recording is bad, the keyboard sounds as if there were a dampener on it. My microphone is a Blue Yeti. What can I do?
Make sure Windows “enhancements” are turned OFF. Some of these “effects” try to filter-out everything except spoken voice, or they can foul-up the sound in all kinds of strange ways…
My microphone is a Blue Yeti.
You can usually get better quality recording direct from the keyboard’s line-output or headphone output, rather than acoustically with a microphone. Or some keyboards have USB, but sometimes the USB is MIDI-only and Audacity is not a MIDI application.
But for the line or headphone output you’ll need a desktop/tower computer with a regular soundcard and line-in, or you can use a USB audio interface with line-in.
Thank you, but unfortunately that did not work. I turned off the enhancements, but there was no change. And I don’t want to use the line out for the keyboards. Why could I record with the Yeti microphone with my old laptop, but not with the new? I hope that anybody here can help me.
There can be more than one layer of enhancements, e.g. MaxxAudio, DTS, Dolby, HP sound, etc.
Thank you, but the option is “Disable ALL enhancements”. I guess that this is not the reason for my problem.
If you Google search the brand-model of your computer and audio enhancements like MaxxAudio, DTS, Dolby, HP Sound, that may reveal the name of the second layer.
In my case it was MaxxAudio … https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/audacity-as-reverb-detector/52902/5
Also check the pick-up pattern setting in the Yeti (usually you want cardioid-directional) and make sure you are recoding from the front side of the mic (not the end) and the mic should be fairly-close to the sound source,
Thank you, but the settings and position of the Yeti are not the reason for this problem, as the microphone always has the same settings and position, but the recordings were good with my old laptop and bad with the new one.
One more silly thing to check - Make sure you’ve selected the USB mic as your Recording Device… Just in case you’re accidently recording from your laptop’s mic.
When there is as Yeti connected, this microphone can be chosen as Recording Device
…It’s probably not Audacity. Audacity just takes whatever Window feeds it. Audacity can’t apply effects while recording and sometimes even Audacity’s recording volume slider doesn’t work with USB or other digital inputs. (Whether the recording volume works may depend on your version of Windows or it may depend on the drivers… Different people seem to get different results.)
Do you still have your old computer? Maybe the Yeti has gone bad?
Or if you want to try another application, ocenaudio is free and GoldWave has a free trial.
Check the recording quality for the USB mic is 44.1khz or 48kHz …
lower sample rates (say 8000Hz) sound muffled.
Yes, I still have my old laptop and the Yeti records without any problems. Actually my old laptop has Windows 10, the new one Windows 11. I don’t know if this might be the reason …
It’s probably a Windows setting but the Yeti and Audacity both normally work fine in Windows 11.
…I WAS going to say it’s good to know the Yeti is OK. That eliminates one potential cause and you don’t need to replace the mic, BUT we still don’t know what the problem is. 
I had the same problem after a Windows 11 update. I’ve never been able to resolve the issue and now use a separate program to record from. I have the same issue on a Windows 11 machine at my office. No solution that I can find