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Hi everyone. First post here. I have a little home studio setup in my room... condesor mic, padded walls and a vox guard to try and get better sound. Im having a few issues that I cant address.

1. When I am recording, the sound is amazing through the headphones, both music and vocals. But when I record and playback, it sounds nothing like it did quality wise. Its like the gain is turned up so much that it makes vocals sound like raw voice rather than the pure quality.

If I turn the gain all the way down, i cant hear myself in the headphones, but still records. Could this be a microphone quality issue? Or would it be because recording through a USB mixer that I lose quality? Could it just be some simple settings to do with equalizing or anything? Could Audacity just not like me?

Like I said, when I sing through the Mic, it sounds amazing through my headset. If I record my vocals. its like the quality disapeared and its too high pitched (and i have a deeper voice) or it sounds like a raw voice...

Any ideas?

Thank you,
Markhowdy

Comments

killarrondo9 Wed, 08/22/2012 - 17:02

Boswell, post: 392648 wrote: Hi, and welcome!

What's your mic? What's your "USB mixer"? Which gain control are you turning down?

Have you heard what your voice sounds like when recorded through a professional setup so you know what you are aiming for?

Its a sterling st-51 condenser mic, got it at guitar center. The mixer is a anexlysis or whatever... It has 4 channels so one is the mic and I use the gain knob on that channel... I did fix a lot of the issue. I found out if you right click on the speaker icon on your computer and go to microphone levels it was turned up. I turned it down all the way so now everything is strictly controlled by the gain knob. The quality has returned but still needs some small tweaking. The mixer I'm using, would I be better off user an interface without all this channels?? I am looking for something that gives me the best recording quality.

Boswell Thu, 08/23/2012 - 05:18

Yes, an audio interface would give you better audio quality and more controllability. The low-cost units are typically two-channel input, so you could record two mics or a guitar and a mic at the same time, and also have headphone/monitor outputs. For around $150 you could get something like a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 or a Presonus Audiobox USB. Don't go too cheap.