Audacity Forum

Hi,
I just bought a new Dell Laptop with Vista installed (Home Premium) and was unable to work the settings on both Audacity and Playback/Recording options on my Sound Card to make recording work. I was looking to see if someone has gone through the same experience and has come up with required settings. Here are the initial settings I did:
1. I have connected Dynamic Mic to Mic/Line in of the laptop. I have set Mic/Line in as the default device for recording on my sound settings. I tried other settings also (using Mic Array as the default input, but it gave lot of extra background noise while recordding).
2. I have connected Headphone to one of the Headphone o/p of laptop and made Headphone/speakers as the default device for Playback on my sound settings
3. I have made similar settings on the Audacity Preference and kept # of channels to 2 for stereo.
4. I am playing a karaoke track from the computer itself using Audacity and trying to record my vocals using the Mic.

Here are the issues I am getting:
1. My Mic voice is very low and lacks good quality ( I am using Shure SM-58). I can also not hear my voice on headphone while I am doing recording.
2. I intially was unable to hear karaoke track also while recording. I than checked one of the options at the bottom of preference (play through software while recording). I can hear the track now but recording is not good.

My configuration more than meets minimum required for Vista (4GB Ram, 2.1 Ghz).
Please advise

<<<My Mic voice is very low and lacks good quality>>>

We probably need to deal with that one independently of the other routing problems, since that one could be a dealbreaker. The SM58 is a perfectly delightful microphone, but it's a straight dynamic, moving coil type. For that mic to work with a standard sound card, the card needs to have the 20dB boost option available. Go back and look for that setting.

If the card does not support 20dB boost, then you have no show.

My preference is to use an external microphone amplifier -- usually much better behaved anyway -- and use the Line-In of the sound card. Do you know how to switch the connection between Mic and Line? Line is about a thousand times louder than Mic, so the difference isn't trivial.

The other option is one of the fine USB interface systems/sound cards.

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9477

Koz

http://www.overclock.net/sound-cards-co ... phone.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RelmsDtRkvM

Another difference between Mic and Line is Mic is mono and Line is stereo.

Koz

I tried tweaking the Bass Boost (made it to 20db and maxed speaker volume) and used Sennheiser e835 instead os SM58. Its little better (loudness) but the quality is still not good (kind of muffled). I was getting much better sound quality using same Mic on my 10 year old desktop.
I was not hearing track on record mode so I checked Play the track while recording new song option in the preference. I am able to hear the track now while recordking but still cannot hear my own voice through the mic. The other issue with this setting is that there is latency in the vocals (I have 4 gb Ram and 2.1 Ghz which is more than sufficient).

So the short answer is you're never going to make it with that sound card. The 20dB Bass Boost just makes it more muffled without doing anything to improve the volume. The object is to be able to overload the microphone channel under test conditions. If you can't do that, then you have no place to go if the live performance is quiet.

How are you adapting the microphones to the sound card? That's difficult to do. You have to find, or more likely build an XLR-Female to 1/8" mono adapter. If you use any other combination, you may not be making good use of your microphone and could be why the sound is muffled.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/UnbalBalAdapter.jpg

This is a classic adapter cable. It's perfect for what you're trying to do. If you have a stereo plug on the 3.5mm end, then you probably have the wrong thing.

The notes on top of the illustration are the formula if you wanted to build it with store parts.

Koz

What about the other issues (latency and not being able to hear my vocal voice while recording).
I am probably going to go for an enxternal USB based interface. Do I have to worry about Vista/sound card settings in that case also or it completely bypasses. can I play track from my laptop (mp3) and record by vocals from the external USB inteface?
I see some info on Edirol but that has a single mic input. How are others like tascam 144/tascam 122L?

The recording quality of the microphone inputs on laptops (and on most general purpose desktop machines) is usually very poor. The best fix is to upgrade the sound card.
If you get a USB sound card, make sure that it has a proper XLR microphone input and a headphone socket. If you get one that has "phantom power", you don't need phantom power for the Sennheiser e835 or the SM58, but it will mean that you will be able to use a condenser microphone if you ever want to upgrade to a studio recording microphone in the future.

If you get a USB microphone you will not be able to monitor the microphone while you record - that's why you need a USB sound card with a headphone socket.

Well,
Today I did lot of trials. I re-installed Audacity. Instead of connecting Sennheiser Mic directly to Laptop, I connected it through a Yamaha Mixer which I then connected as Line In device to my laptop. I tried to record using following metods:
1. Mixed the track and vocals through the mixer Yamaha mixer itself and recorded on Audacity. Recording was good. I was able to control Mic levels/Music levels through the mixer. The only issue is that mixer does not have Echo/reverb cabability so Song was flat.
2. I imported the track on audacity and recorded the song with just the vocals coming from the Yamaha Mixer (to hear the track while recording, I checked play the track while recording). This would have allowed me to put reverb/echo efects to the vocals. Sound quality of the vocals again was better but latency issues.
So bottom line..now the problem is only how to deal with the latency issues. Surprisingly, my 10 year old computer which way less memory was little better. With 20 times memory and faster processor..still having latency issue was surprising. I tried lot of things (changing from 16 Bit to 24 Bit to 32 Bit..44.1 Mhz/48Mhz etc etc) but it did not help.

when i record in vista its always mono, ive tried going through all the settings i know of but none seems to fix this problem... anyone help plz

i also don't seem to get my cable inside the pink socket 100%, i can get it in like 90% :p this might be it?

See Bam's response about two thirds of the way down this thread: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 12&t=12902

WC