I bought the Samson meteor mic and it worked perfectly. My mic volume was on 100 in windows setting and it sounded great and didn’t pic up much background noise. One day the microphone went super sensitive and would pick up ANY noise and when it was silent in my room on team speak for example it would show there noise being picked up.
also talking normally would cause the red light on the microphone to go off meaning it was peaking compared to before when it never would go red. i changed the USB port and a new the device was “re installed” and worked again for a short amount of time (usually a day) before that port went out and i kept doing that until i ran out of USB ports.
It seems the mic has self amplified or something and the quality of the mic is nowhere close to where it used to be and super sensitive. Yes, i could turn the volume in windows down to about 30 and i have to but the quality is incredibly reduced that it sounds like a laptop mic compared to the godlike mic i previously owned. I tried re installing drivers and nothing happened and i also replaced the microphone with a new one and it was exactly the same. Would love to know if there is a solution to this before i bite the bullet and buy a new microphone.
Thanks Ross
It seems the mic has self amplified or something
I’ll go with “or something.”
it sounds like a laptop mic
How sure are you that it wasn’t your laptop mic? Try the scratch test.
Describe your computer in detail. I’m typing on a 2012 Mac Mini with OS-X 10.9.5. It has no built-in microphone.
There’s probably zero chance that it’s the microphone, particularly since this is your second one. So anything else you do is going to have exactly the same problems. What else do you do with the microphone? Do you have and use Skype? Other conferencing? Voice Notes? Windows is getting more and more creative about “helping you” by adding processing and corrections without telling you.
Obviously, you want crisp/peaked quality Skype voice. Nobody wants to record high quality vocal performances.
The older, known Windows tricks gave you “cellphone voice” and really bad music. It got better.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_recording_troubleshooting.html#enhancements
You may need to wait for the Windows elves to arrive. I can only marvel at the Windows sound problems.
Koz
There is one pure evil possibility. How sure are you that you’re the only one using your microphone? Do you put black tape over your webcam when you’re not using it? You can totally turn on a webcam without the little light.
Koz
This bit really does point to a driver issue of some sort.
as does that.
Have you tried to talk to the folks at Sampson? Having just bought a second one and getting the same results I would think you would have cause.
I’m on a Desktop so i’m confident that there is no other mic.
i mentioned it on Samson and they said that if the red light is peaking that means the voume setting needs to be turned down so not really helpful advice but i didn’t go into as much detail as i did here so i think I’l write a new ticket.
Thanks
Also i use skype and Teamspeak 3 and didn’t add any new programs from when the change happened.
Skype is famous for changing the computer’s sound system to suit its needs and then “forgetting” to change the settings back when it was done. I know you can’t do this, but I bet if you got the microphone working and didn’t do anything else with the computer, it would be fine forever.
This makes you a candidate for not recording production on the computer, which oddly is not all that unusual.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DR40
Adjustable onboard microphones let you optimize the DR-40 for any environment, and a pair of locking Neutrik XLR Combo jacks let plug your own mics or instruments for full 4-track recording.
I’ve never used one of those. I have a Zoom H4.
Koz
I don’t know if this would be of any use to you, especially if you have no other microphone or webcam attached to your computer, but occasionally my mic or speakers are changed by some program or whatever without my knowledge, or at least without me remembering doing so myself.
I’ve had some luck in opening up Audacity and clicking on the dropdown menus for the microphone or the speakers and selecting the one(s) that I want. Sometimes it takes a minute or two to switch, if I recall, but that has fixed things for me in the past.
edit: I have been keeping a Behringer UCA-202 attached via USB cable lately, and play the sound from my computer through my stereo system. Sometimes things I will switch things back & forth between the computer speakers and the stereo system for playback and sometimes things seem to change on their own for some reason. The mic can also change back and forth between my laptop or the USB mic, and I can change things manually in Audacity via those drop down menus. I suppose I could go through the Windows control panel and do it as well, but I’m more familiar with using Audacity.