Voice recording - playback muffled and quiet

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

Hello. I’m hoping someone might be able to give me a couple of ideas on a problem with Audacity 2.0 and microphone recording - although if I’m honest I’m not sure it is actually a problem with Audacity. Still, I know there’re people here who know their stuff so I thought it might be worth asking!

My partner is trying to record speech for a presentation she’s planning to do. She’s working on multiple stereo tracks in Audacity, with one of those being speech. She’s already recorded the first section, but whilst trying to record the second - which she was doing on a separate track in a new file, to be inserted into the master project later - she found the resultant recording very muffled and very quiet.

The odd thing is that on reloading the original project we’ve now found that that speech track is also playing back equally quiet and muffled. It was playing back fine, but something’s changed and we can’t work out what it might be.

Immediate suggestions we thought of:

Microphone. We’re not using a quality mike. In fact, it’s a fairly flimsy, simple one with a standard 3.5 jack. We’re not after exceptional recording quality and the one we’re using is adequate. We’ve tested using another mike (a cheap headset) and the effect is the same, so we think we can rule out a mike and/or speakers fault.

Sound card. Actually there isn’t one: we’re using integrated Realtek sound. Again, we’re aware this isn’t high quality, but it’s adequate for our needs. We’re reasonably sure it’s not the cause of the problem since Windows sounds and MP3s etc play perfectly normally.

Realtek settings. There is a graphic equaliser/environment settings program installed, which we thought might be having some sort of impact but we’ve checked it and made sure all the distortion effects and so on are switched off.

We’ve tested the mike in Windows Sound and the visual indicator suggests it’s picking up all right.

And then we get to Audacity itself - but I’m afraid I’m no expert and I don’t really know what settings to look for. It’s always just worked before. So I wondered if any of you would be able to provide me a checklist of some of the basic settings needed to do what we want to do?

If it helps, we’re using Audacity 2.0.0 on Windows XP Home, version 2002, Service Pack 3. The machine has a 3GHz CPU and 3GB RAM (somehow). To be honest I can’t remember whether Audacity came from the .exe or the .zip.

We’re really just looking to see if there’s anything obvious to look for that might have changed in the meantime - some people say computers don’t just reconfigure themselves, but personally I’ve never believed that. :smiley:

Thanks for reading, and for any suggestions you might be able to offer.

Tac.

2

I lost that in the description. You’re recording a stereo track and the voice is on the left, nothing on the right? Then you’re recording a second stereo track by pressing stop and then record again, thereby giving you two tracks one above the other? Unless the Mute or Solo buttons are pressed, both tracks will play at once.

I can’t see what you gain by doing that. Can you give me a push? We need to build your show in our heads. You can’t give us too much info.

You should check and see if Window’ conferencing services are not turned on, although that should not affect a human voice. It’s designed not to, but that can have a serious affect on the recorded sound, particularly if you’re trying to record music.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/FAQ:Recording#enhancements

You can get into trouble if you record your old tracks on top of your new ones. Overdubbing, Multi-track and Sound-On-Sound need to be done with headphones. Never run a live microphone and speakers in the same show.

Make sure you’re recording what you think you’re recording. Use the Device Toolbar to select the microphone and not Stereo Mix or any of the other “fake” devices that allow you to record computer/internet sound.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/help/manual/man/device_toolbar.html

Koz

3

There is one way out there possibility. Are you listening on a single speaker or through a mono mixdown? It’s possible to produce sound that partially cancels out when two tracks are played at once. If you re-record a clip and then play both, computer delay may cause all sorts of weird effects – barrel, honking, muffled, screechy, boomy, etc.

Here’s an experiment. Put down your normal track one and then record track two but don’t say anything. Using the solo buttons, play track two by itself. What do you hear?

Koz

4

Tac,
I’m also not clear as to precisely what you have done. This is my understanding:

  • you have an Audacity project which contains, amongst other items, your first part of the speech
  • you saved this? or you exported this? which?
  • you then started a new project in which you recorded the second part of the speech and nothing else
  • you saved this? or you exported this? which?
    Is my understanding correct?

Some of the following points might be redundant depending upon the answers to those first four.

  • When you listened to the first speech part and it was OK, was that before you saved/exported or after?
  • If after, were you listening to the recording through Audacity? or via a media player from the exported file?
  • When you listened to the second speech part and it was not OK, was that before you saved/exported or after?
  • If after, were you listening to the recording through Audacity? or via a media player from the exported file?
  • When you tried to listen to the first part again, was that via Audacity or via a media player
  • If via Audacity was it the project file or the exported sound file that you loaded into Audacity?

Remember, we cannot see your PC nor hear your speakers. Give us good clear information with lots of detail.

5

See? You need to blow that second paragraph out to fine details. Koz

6

Hello. Thanks for the replies. The more I’ve thought about this, the more I’ve come to suspect that it’s a problem with the RealTek manager settings, rather than a problem with Audacity itself. In view of that, I’ll not take up any more of your time, but I do appreciate you taking the trouble to consider this.

That said, since you’ve asked me some questions it seems polite to answer them:

“You’re recording a stereo track and the voice is on the left, nothing on the right?”

The project we’re working on consists of three stereo channels. One is for voice - which we’re recording on a stereo track simply because it never occurred to me to do it any other way (I stress I’m not an audio expert, and for our purposes here, ‘adequate’ is an acceptable standard: we’re not after professional studio-quality results!). The other two tracks are background sounds, which we’ve imported in from .wav files and are also in their own stereo tracks.

“Make sure you’re recording what you think you’re recording. Use the Device Toolbar to select the microphone and not Stereo Mix or any of the other “fake” devices that allow you to record computer/internet sound.”

I have tried several different settings, but only as an ignorant sort of experiment. There’re a couple of different mike options but generally we’ve stuck to the proper one.

“Are you listening on a single speaker or through a mono mixdown? It’s possible to produce sound that partially cancels out when two tracks are played at once”

That’s a good suggestion, but I don’t think it’s that. We’ve done no mixing, and I would imagine (though I may be wrong) that that sort of wave interference would create an erratic sort of effect. This is pretty consistent. And we’ve tried playback through stereo speakers and headphones.

And to PGA:

At the moment, we’ve done no exports of anything as yet: we’re assembling all the clips as an .aup project and were intending to export it only when it was finished.

It’s actually just the vocal track - the one we’ve recorded with the mike - that’s having problems: the sound-effect tracks play fine. What’s got me stumped is why the previously fine vocal track we’ve already put into the project - which has previously played okay - now appears to have developed the same problem as the new tracks we’re now trying to record. Nothing about the previous project has been changed, as far as I’m aware, since we inserted the first vocal section.

As I say, I’m tending to think it’s something to do with the machine’s sound management rather than Audacity. When I have some time I’ll do some more messing around with settings and such and see how it pans out.

Thanks again for your time.

T.

7

Any recent automatic Windows Updates? have these introduced new/modified drivers, perhaps?

8

Ahem. Right. This is me wearing my embarrassed and sheepish face, while I offer two simple words:

Karaoke setting. :blush:

Turns out the karaoke setting on the RealTek manager had got switched on somehow, and it never dawned on me that the little cross in the box meant it was on, as opposite to meaning it was disabled. So the RealTek manager was cheerfully suppressing everything in the vocal frequency ranges and the end result was - you got it - quiet and muffled speech playback.

So, problem solved, and nothing to do with poor old Audacity at all. Sorry about that, and thanks for your help. :slight_smile: