Members Hudman Posted April 2, 2006 Members Posted April 2, 2006 Ok fellas, I'm new to recording with a mic. I did some test recordings last night. I moved the condenser mic around to experiment with the sound. I found that I got the best sound with the mic pointing towards to 12 th fret (angled towards the sound hole), about 12" - 15" away. I had great results with one exception: Every once in a while the guitar sound would become a booming static sound for 5 to 10 seconds. It's intermittent, sometimes it doesn't do it at all. I'm using my laptop to record. Could it be computer interference from another program running in the background or is it an input gain issue? I used 2 seperate programs with the same results. So far I used Audacity and Adobe Auditon 1.5. I'm using a Samson C01U USB Studio Condenser Mic. I was playing at a very low level. It was late at nite. I'm going to try it again later today at normal levels. It could be that I was overloading the mic during portions of my playing due to the high input levels I was using. Anyone else ever experience this type of static / distortion? Any suggestions?
Members JasmineTea Posted April 2, 2006 Members Posted April 2, 2006 Bad mic cable? Wire tap? ..That's it! GW's {censored}in' with you. Dammit.
Members kwakatak Posted April 2, 2006 Members Posted April 2, 2006 Yeah, you should post a sound sample Hudman. I'm at a loss and don't want to give you bad advice. I'm wondering if it's the USB interface though? Have you considered acquiring a preamp or mixer and upgrading your A/V card? Just a thought. When I got my Behringer mixer it seemed to solve some problems I was having with signal strength but other things came up like a hums and hisses. FWIW, it sounds as if you found the right mic placement though. I'm still having trouble with that one. My guitar is half as nice as yours though.
Members Hudman Posted April 2, 2006 Author Members Posted April 2, 2006 The USB cable is new. I switched it with another USB cable to check it out - same problem. My laptop is 2 years old. I have 3 USB ports on my laptop. I tried all 3 - same problem. My USB ports work fine. I run a printer, a digital camera and an optical mouse through them. I have a theory. I've been running around all day with the wife and kids, so I didn't get a chance to test my theory yet. I think the noise I'm hearing is the vibrations from the harddrive / fan on my laptop. That's why it's intermittent. I'm using a 3 leg fold up, table top mic stand. Everytime the hardrive or fan kicks on, the mic stand picks up the vibration through the table and the guitar signal gets distorted. I'm going to have to figure out a way to isolate the laptop from the mic.
Members kwakatak Posted April 3, 2006 Members Posted April 3, 2006 Get a mic stand then. I bought an On-Stage brand tripod w/ boom for about $30 from Elderly. http://www.elderly.com/new_instruments/items/MSTB.htm
Members Hudman Posted April 3, 2006 Author Members Posted April 3, 2006 Originally posted by kwakatak Get a mic stand then. I bought an On-Stage brand tripod w/ boom for about $30 from Elderly. http://www.elderly.com/new_instruments/items/MSTB.htm Good idea. In the meantime I plan to put my laptop on a seperate table or on a chair.
Members daklander Posted April 3, 2006 Members Posted April 3, 2006 Originally posted by Hudman Good idea. In the meantime I plan to put my laptop on a seperate table or on a chair. Yeah, let us know if that's the cure. Really doesn't like it would give a static sound though. There may be a problem with the mic but I don't want to really speculate until there's more info.
Members Queequeg Posted April 3, 2006 Members Posted April 3, 2006 I guess this means: no inquiry. no sanction. no impeachment. I'm going home.
Members Hudman Posted April 4, 2006 Author Members Posted April 4, 2006 I'm learning fellas. Thanks for the help. It seems like I need to learn how to adjust my preamp settings to work with my recording software settings. The noise I was getting was from overloading the input. I believe it's called clipping. I isolated the mic and the problem remained (nice theory - but a bad one - story of my life). I think I have a handle on it now. I experimented with the input level and low cut on my preamp software. The mic is very sensitive. It picks up every little noise. Now I am working on eliminating the low hiss background noise. I've yet to record anything other than random strumming and fingerpicking. I will post some clips after I get the bugs worked out.
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