Hi all,
Well, I was hoping that my new equipment setup was going to be at least some kind of improvement, but I’ve now gone to ‘not the best’ audio to BAD.
My current setup:
Audacity v2.2.2
Windows 7 laptop (located outside soundbooth)
Behringer U-Phoria UM2 Audio Interface
Shure SM58 Mic
Description of what is going on: After getting a crazy kind of whine out of the Behringer, I did some research and found you need to install the Behringer drivers (not rely on the automatic Windows drivers when it finds the Behringer), which did improve the situation. I also watched a review/test of the UM2 and the guy explained that he set the mic sensitivity at about 75% - which was, he said, a good mix of cutting out noise while still having mic volume. Well, in my case, I have to turn the mic sensitivity all the way up to get a decent mic response and of course, then you get all the noise. The sample I’ve attached is raw, untouched and I have the sensitivity set at about 75-80%. You can see how low the waveform is. You can HEAR the insane amount of trash in the background once you RMS Normalize / Limit it. I can clean it up somewhat with the noise filter, but I don’t think that’s a good idea…it should not be this quiet and trashy. Anybody know if the quiet issue is the SM58? I googled and saw one post about the SM58 being quiet with the Behringer. The trashy sound may be something I can fix…who knows, maybe it’s coming from the USB cable or the fact that the cable is too close to the power cord running out of my booth. But this quiet seems ridiculous. I can barely get the sound to clip by turning the sensitivity all the way up and yelling into the mic.
Some more settings, btw:
Windows mic volume - max
Audacity mic volume - max
Behringer - tried with both monitoring on / off, didn’t make a difference
48V Phantom power - OFF
//Dan