Terrible recording quality [SOLVED]

Hi,

My recording quality in audacity is terrible. Listen :

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/fr/dictionnaire/anglais/england?q=England
(you can click on the little speaker to hear the difference with the attachment)

I screenshoted my recording settings. I record in stereo, 44100khz 32bit-float.

2021-09-27_221359.png
2021-09-27_221339.png
2021-09-27_221347.png

It doesn’t sound “terrible” : the voices are clear, but does sounds like a bassy (tube-y?) effect is being applied.

Try turning off Windows audio enhancements before making another recording of what the computer is playing.

[ There could also be a second layer of audio enhancements ]

Actually this is not shocking for this exemple but I have other one which really is (and I still can’t really explain why… same site, didn’t change any settings)

Hey, listen :

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/fr/dictionnaire/anglais/france

I mean this clearly not faithful it’s like the thing has been recorded from a phone or something… Pretty sure everybody there can record things with undetectable loss, right ?

Hey I think I found it. There were no enhancement in the sound control panel, but like you suggested with your second link, Maxxaudio had the settings on multimedia, and I switched it to Off.
2021-09-28_023035.png
This is way better like that.

The noise is normal I guess ?

With noise reduction effect in Audacity :

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/france



On the enhancements in sound control panel, I saw that my devices were set in different modes :
16-bits 48khz
24-bits 48khz
I had the possibility to set them even in 192khz. Isn’t it better ?

Thanks anyway !

IMO keep everything (including audacity) at 48kHz.
192kHz is overkill and may even be counterproductive: it may cause the audio to glitch.

Thanks.

Is there a way to put the topic as solved ? I edit the title ?

Unfortunately we don’t have a “solved” button, so simply saying that it is solved is sufficient.
A moderator may then decide to close the topic so that the solution does not get buried beneath other comments.

Thanks for sharing the solution. I’ll close this topic as solved.