What am I missing? Please help

T

thewatch

New member
Hi all,

I love singing and recently have bought Blue Yeti microphone for recording instead of my phone.
I have a pop filter too, and about a foot away from the mic when recording.
I use Audacity to record (Im new to the software so just leave settings as default just hit the record button and playback to check the result) and the result turnout not as good as I expected.

1st: is the microphone good enuf for vocal recording cause its result sound worse than what my phone can record.
2nd: when I hit high notes, the sound start breaking and very hard to listen to, I have to lower the gain level in the mic to about 35% to avoid this, is this normal? because it causing the recorded track volume lower than usual.

What am I missing and what can I do to improve it.
My PC doesnt have a sound card, can a sound card improve the recording?

I really appreciate If someone could help.
 
It's not the microphone, don't worry.

If the sound breaks up when hitting high notes (which typically take a lot of volume to achieve), you're probably clipping the input. Back the input gain off until you can hit the loudest notes without any digital clipping (going into the red).

This recording will sound quieter than your phone, initially, because your phone's awful mic and worse app is probably doing goodness knows what kind of compression and limiting, thus raising the overall volume.

Most professionally recorded mixes end up with average levels around between -8 and -14db (very quiet). This all gets raised to commercial levels during pre-master and mastering.

Right now, focus on getting clean vocal recordings. Crank up the volume fader on your computer, speakers, headphones, whatever to hear the recording and don't worry about how loud it is compared to things on your phone.
 
hi my PC doesnt have a sound card, Im not sure what equipment should I get to improve the recording quality.
 
Thanks for the reply Brian,
did you mean I should try a highest note and adjust the gain level to prevent it going into the red area in audacity?
 
thewatch said:
hi my PC doesnt have a sound card, Im not sure what equipment should I get to improve the recording quality.
Click to expand...

These days, most PCs have the sound stuff on the motherboard, so there is no separate card as such. But your PC will have sockets for plugging a mike and speakers (or headphone) into.

Onboard sound is ok for gaming and playing music and videos through PC speakers, but is not all that suited to making good quality recordings.

If you want to make a significant improvement on what you can do with your phone, you would need to need to look at more than just a USB microphone. You may get by with a USB mike for podcasts, or for adding a vocal track to a karaoke backing, but most likely you would still have to get something better than PC speakers or earbuds.

You would really need to look at a dedicated audio interface, decent monitors and a good recording environment,
 
Read every thread in the newbies forum, especially the stickies, and you'll end up with a whole lot more knowledge, and respect for the complexities of recording. There's a way to go from a USB mic, Audacity and nil recording experience to getting decent sounding recordings.

It's difficult to give you specific advice about gain structure when you're talking about "reducing the mic to 35%" and "not going into red areas" - the standard advice is to go in with peaks about -12dB - that's not a % thing though.... and singing, and singing into a microphone are different skills.

Lots to learn, so get reading. And, as I've said so many times, Audacity is a sound editor and a useful program no doubt, and we all have it and use it for various tasks, but (mostly) not tracking - there are easier ways to skin the recording cat.
 
thewatch said:
Thanks for the reply Brian,
did you mean I should try a highest note and adjust the gain level to prevent it going into the red area in audacity?
Click to expand...

Yes, you should set the level so that your loudest notes are peaking in the -8 to -14db range. Wayyy below clipping (red). In digital recording there's no reason to even come close to clipping, because you can just raise the level once it's recorded.
 
thanks for the helpful advice Armistice
will keep the peaks about -12dB and Im reading other posts too, this forum has so much useful infos and tips and im still exploring :)
 
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