I get a watery sound when removing noise in audacity

[steve]

It's the SCT2000 that I'll be testing. It's a valve mic. (T is for Tube).

I've not used the SC400 or SC600, but I've used the SC450 quite a bit and I was sufficiently impressed with it (for the price) that I bought one for myself.

[kozikowski]

<<<Koz, your playing is not that bad... I mean, it's not your guitar... You'll get there with some more practice
I'm not much of a fan of steel strings, but for a $20 mic I think it's pretty decent.>>>

The guitar is grand. I once owned a hollow-body, but I don't have those little things on my finger tips any more, so in addition to sounding awful, it's painful.

Had our poster started with that system, he probably wouldn't be here now. It's certainly enough to send a guitar solo to my sister in Schenectady over Skype (I will always be grateful to my sister for buying a house in a city with a funny name).

Anyway, back to the topic. I did another field experiment that may be valuable here. One of the Inferno Artists on the third floor has a top-drawer Fender solid body. He consented to letting me run some fiendish experiments on it. It's a wonder those people don't run and hide when they see me coming.

I put my scope on the pickup and strummed away. I could generate peak waveforms over 0.7 v. In English, that means the signal out of a pickup is High Level, Line-Out, not microphone level. Anybody plugging that guitar into a microphone connection will be doomed to constant peak distortion.

"Of course," said the Inferno Artist, "everybody knows that."

Koz

[cwaugh18]

Hey... I am still looking at preamp's for the best deal. I have found a few and wondered what the differences where... are they all both suitable for what I am trying to do? (Record my acoustic guitar and vocals at the same time, amplify the sound for monitoring on my computer speakers (they are really good speakers... 100 bucks worth) and use it for live Skype. Also the recording quality should be good enough to mix together with virtual instruments and stuff.

Here are the links to these preamp's:

1: http://www.long-mcquade.com/products/87 ... erface.htm

2: http://www.long-mcquade.com/products/12 ... th_USB.htm

3: http://www.long-mcquade.com/products/89 ... erface.htm

Which one is the best for my needs?

Thanks,
-Chris

[kozikowski]

My personal preference is to avoid anything with vacuum tubes in it. They're still glass and break easily, they get hot, they take a minute or two to turn on, and they take hundreds of volts to get them to work right.

Oh, and they wear out and have to be replaced. They don't tell you that in the ads. How much is replacing that 12AU7GTB (or whatever it is) going to set you back?

Koz

[yaketysax]

Jeez I'm starting to feel like a stalker on this forum!!

My very next query was what type of mic to use on the Audacity and you have alredy covered it! I am sax & acoustic guitar player so whatever suits - Please advise?

Regards

P

[cwaugh18]

Would this one be good? I like it because it has decent software with it. Does it have a tube?

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrack.html

-Chris

[steve]

I am sax & acoustic guitar player so whatever suits - Please advise?

The trouble with asking advice on microphones is that you must also describe the application and the budget.
For live use, the DPA 4099SAX is in my opinion the ultimate - great tone and you can ramp up the volume a heck of a long way without fear of feedback or ringing.
Somewhat more affordable for the same job, I like the AKG C 519 M. These microphones can also be used for recording, though I prefer the more "open" sound of using a studio condenser a couple of feet away (~0.5 m) in a fairly dry room. At the other extreme I have a "Studio Spares" clip on microphone (sorry, I don't know the model number and it is unmarked) which works amazingly well clipped onto the bell of a tenor sax and cost around $10 (I made a slight modification to change the unbalanced mini-jack to a 1/4" balanced jack).

[steve]

Would this one be good? I like it because it has decent software with it.

The reviews are generally pretty good, but we've had quite a few users having problems with the M-Audio FastTrack. I get the impression that it has been made primarily to work with ASIO (which is not supported by the standard release version of Audacity) and that the Windows drivers are almost an afterthought - though to be fair, I've not used one myself so I'm just going on what I have read.

Also, I'm not personally very keen on ProTools (though I use it at works, and it is often cited as the "Industry Standard" recording software).

[cwaugh18]

Hey... based on what everyones saying... I would assume this one is my best bet? http://www.long-mcquade.com/products/87 ... erface.htm correct me if I am wrong.... does it have a vacuum tube?

-Chros

[bgravato]

Hey... based on what everyones saying... I would assume this one is my best bet? http://www.long-mcquade.com/products/87 ... erface.htm correct me if I am wrong.... does it have a vacuum tube?

-Chros

No it doesn't, no tubes on that one... That's the one I have and I can recommend it. I don't know the others so I can't speak for them...

I was writing another post on this thread but I must have hit the wrong button cause it disappeared...

May I ask what speakers you got? I have two pairs of Creative's Gigaworks (T20 and T40) and I think they're very good for the price (which should be about the same you said)