My Recording Level Seems Too Low

[thisjulie]

Hi,

I'm working on my first podcast for a press I'm interning with and I've made a lot of progress. I have interviews setup and fiction to read. However I'm still working through the technical kinks. I have Audacity 1.3 installed on Windows Vista. I have a Blue Microphone Snowball mic (USB) with a pop filter. When I've installed PrettyMay Call Recorder for my Skype interviews and added the Spitfish plug-in for my sibilance problem.

So here's the issue, Spitfish isn't picking up anything. I think it's because my recording levels are too low. When I record with the input setting at maximum in Audacity (and the Windows input level for the Snowball mic also set to 100%), the recording level hangs around -24 decibels (not the -6 decibels suggested in the user manual). The audio peaks seem to sit somewhere between 0.15 and 0.2 (not the 0.5 "ideal").

I've got my mic on setting #1 (for single voice recording). Because of the sibilance issue, I'm experimenting with recording between 1 and 1/2 ft to 3 ft from the mic with a gain setting of +10. (It still isn't enough to fix the problem, BTW.)

When I publish my tests as MP3s on the web they sound seems high enough....but I really am just figuring all this out. I could be way off. I've never done audio recording before.
You can hear my sample recordings (not sure if that would help) at: http://stillwingingit.com/?p=203.

Screenshot below

screenshot2.jpg (67.93 KiB) Viewed 1714 times

[kozikowski]

You may have glided right past the problem. Yes, the raw capture seems to be overly hard, crisp and bright, but my snowball doesn't do that.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/clip ... owball.wav

A reading from the specifications reveals a slight "haystack" vocal response which puts this microphone in the same field as the SM58 "Rock Concert" microphone, the classic EV635A and many others. Good voices, no sibilance.

That coupled with the lower than normal level seems to point to a microphone not working quite right. You should be on "cardioid" setting. This will help you suppress the echoes in the room. Cardioid -10dB is for loud musical instruments. You can use Circular for an interview, but only in a good, quiet, echo-free room.

with a gain setting of +10.

Where is this gain setting? All I did was set the microphone on the table, select it in system preferences and Audacity and press record. In fuzzy generalities, the volume level is set inside the microphone. Some computers give you the ability to reset the level later -- just before Audacity records it.

There are any number of ways you can mess up a regular analog microphone to have problems like this, but USB microphones have all these problems engineered out. It either works or it doesn't.

Koz

[kozikowski]

You could be suffering from Windows trying to help you with your recording. Vista and Win7 have conferencing settings which try and tailor voice responses for conferencing, Skype, etc. It's precisely not what you want for theatrical recording.

Windows Enhanced Sound
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 79&start=0

If you find any of that, you should turn it off.

Koz