I’ve been having trouble with my recordings recently, ever since I got my new mic. Whenever I try to record acoustic guitar with the mic (Apex 530 Condenser Mic) it makes weird sound I can’t really explain. I need to let you listen. http://download1098.mediafire.com/r1nab79111wg/n9u912riclbykm2/weirdsound.mp3
My friend has told me that it is because the plates in the mic dont vibrate the same as the strings on my guitar but I just need to make sure with the experts here, and how I can fix the problem.
My mic is an Apex 530 Condenser Mic (as i’ve said above) connected to my mixer (Behringer XENYX 502) with an XLR cable, my mixer is then connected to the microphone jack to my laptop. My soundcard is SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio. I’m running on Windows XP on an IBM T60 Thinkpad.
The abrupt decay and distortion sound like “echo cancellation” artifacts.
Switch off “echo cancellation” if you have it on. It’s probably in “microphone properties”, or some Skype-type VOIP program.
Then the control to switch the “echo cancellation” off should be in the software to control your sound card. Have a look in “all programs” for something with the same name as your soundcard.
BTW I’m 100% certain the weirdness is due to echo cancellation, it’s partially correctable with extreme dynamic range compression …
It’s not a fix: compression won’t fix the distorted bits, it just makes the quiet bits louder.
You need to switch that dammed “echo cancellation” off.
My soundcard controls can be accessed by clicking on this Sigmatel thing in “hardware and sound” …
Your sound card has a different name. If you see anything in “hardware and sound” with “soundMAX” click on it and hopefully it will then give you an option to switch echo cancellation off.
I do have the SoundMAX option in my control panel. It brings me to the SoundMAX control panel with options like
Microphone Setup :
Standard Microphone (i selected this one)
Headset
and
Microphone Enhancements:
No Filtering
Voice Recording (i selected this one)
Speaker Phone
I went through the Audacity Noise Removal wiki and it’s step by step tutorial with images.
This is really a kind of excellent tutorial. I wouldn’t have done it without going through
this tutorial. Also huge kudos for the Advanced Tip at the very wiki. I have also downloaded the Bonus Remix.
Note: Mediafire link is deleted now.