Could someone help me out here. I record a podcast with two friends & would like to have better sound quality than I currently get just from my inbuilt PC mic.
If I bought 3 USB headset/microphones, could we all use them to record at the same time?
To8oT: please do not double post - it is considered very bad form on anty internet forum. It only wastes people’s time, annoys them and doesn’t get your question answered any quicker. I have removed your duplicate post.
There have been many discussion threads on this topic on the forum particularly in this section - try using the Search function at the top right of the page.
Actually it’s not the double-posters that bother us most - it’s the tidal waves of spam. The clean-up team of elves spends a fair while every day getting rid of the garbage (some of it with dangerous links).
But the short answer is no. Audacity will only manage one sound device at a time. People trying to record multi-player games and multi-guest podcasts all run into the same problem.
In the case of the games, sometimes you can record the computer’s own sound service and that can work, but not capture all three microphones directly.
More than one usb mic connected to the same computer at the same time is usually regarded as trouble maker… Specially in windows, according to many testimonials, that’s strongly discouraged…
If you need to connect more than one mic to the same system than an external mixer is the way to go…
Thanks all for your replies… I thought it seemed slightly too simple an idea to work! I think it’ll be the good old internal mic for me for a while yet…
Yes, but that doesn’t mean it has to sound like trash. You can do really well with a built-in microphone if 1) Windows Sound Services isn’t trying to help you with echo cancellation and other tricks, 2) the laptop itself doesn’t make too much noise, and 3) you do it in a quiet room.
It doesn’t have to sound like you’re recording in a bathroom and that’s what gives most “home” videos that cheesy quality. I saw a YouTube where the performer went to great pains to simulate a network news desk – colours and all. The spoof made it right up to the first time he opened his mouth and it turned out he was using the microphone on top of his camcorder and he was recording in a bathroom – or at least it sounded like it.
Here. Not a lot of setup with this and I did edit the volumes so the newspaper test isn’t killer loud. I suspect I could easily get rid of the rest of the background noise with Steve’s Threshold Filter or Noise Reduction.
