Sound very low

I’m very new to this. Using Audacity 2.3.3, Soundcraft Notepad-8fx with Rockville mics, standard USB from board to PC (HP - plenty of RAM and processor speed for Audacity) for 2 person podcast. When simply testing sound input (viewing the sound monitor within Audacity), I can snap my fingers in front of the mic with gain and input volume all the way up and only receive about -32db (recording the sound gets about the same levels - next to nothing). All the videos/tutorials I’m seeing show common talking getting quite close to 0db (esp. with gain and volume to max). I can get the audio in my headphones to blast the sound, but that’s only from the mixer not through Audacity.

Any assistance would be great.

Make sure you are recording from the mixer, not from the mic built-into your laptop.

Normally the USB output is simply a digitized version of the analog output but there may be a setting/option on the mixer.

Or, in some cases Windows can monkey with the sound - Make sure [u]Windows “Enhancements”[/u] are disabled for the USB device.