Muffled recording

[EliseRobinson]

I have been using Audacity to record vocals for a few months, but am now having a few issues.

- After recording a second layer/track e.g vocals over a backing track, the vocals are not in sync/time with the first (backing) track (imported audio). The new vocal track is consistently 1-2 seconds behind.

- The actual recording itself (I don't have this same problem with imported audio) is very muffled and the sound quality is awful.
Thinking this must be a hardware problem, I bought I new microphone. This had no effect so I reinstalled audacity, and realised there was an update, so upgraded to 1.3.5 (Unicode). This had no effect either. I'm interested to see no one else seems to have had this problem, but it is making Audacity completely un-usable at the moment. I also know this is not to do with my hardware/computer as I use the same microphone and set up for internet calls - which are not distorted at all.

Any thoughts on the above? All help appriciated!

Regards, Elise

[waxcylinder]

try searching the forum for threads on Latency and how to correct it.

WC

[EliseRobinson]

I'm not too worried about the latency - thats easily fixed manually. Any ideas on the sound quality?

- The actual recording itself (I don't have this same problem with imported audio) is very muffled and the sound quality is awful.
Thinking this must be a hardware problem, I bought I new microphone. This had no effect so I reinstalled audacity, and realised there was an update, so upgraded to 1.3.5 (Unicode). This had no effect either. I'm interested to see no one else seems to have had this problem, but it is making Audacity completely un-usable at the moment. I also know this is not to do with my hardware/computer as I use the same microphone and set up for internet calls - which are not distorted at all.

[steve]

Go into "Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O" and switch off (de-select) "software playthrough".

[EliseRobinson]

That option was not selected anyway =/
Hmm, I've even asked a friend of mine who's studying sound technology and he couldn't even fix it!

Any other ideas? I'm grateful for all your suggestions

[steve]

I'm somewhat surprised by that "1-2 second delay" - "software playthrough" causes a noticeable delay, but if that is already off then it's a bit of a mystery. It may be worth giving Audacity 1.3 (beta) a go - it's considerably more up to date than 1.2.6.

[EliseRobinson]

I've upgraded to 1.3.5 - that was just a few days ago - but neither of the problems have been fixed completely. The delay however, is slightly better than before.

But since the sound quality is so poor, and I have noticed after clicking stop after recording the track actually adjusts on the screen - making it look like a process Audacity has been set to do. Apart from that, I'm stuck. 2 sound tech lads, one forum, and many friends have all been puzzled by this!