Need help with improving recording quality

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Whatever123

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Hi,

I've recently borrowed some equipment that I had been using at my school, and set it up in my room. Unfortunatley the sound quality has worsened, and I was wondering why this was and how I could improve it.


I have a Shure SM58 Mic, a Spirit Notepad mixer and an acer aspire laptop. I'm using cool edit pro to record the vocals. The vocals are showing up fine on my computer, but the quality isn't great. I had previously been using the same mic and mixer with a Mac and Garageband, and the quality was much better. So it makes me think that it's my laptop which is reducing the quality.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
 
Hi there,
The two main variables are the room and the computer.
There's a very high chance that what you're hearing is the difference between their room and your room.
The computer used can effect latency and overall capability, but isn't likely to effect audio quality.

Was the room at school treated?Presumably, at very least, it was much bigger than your room?
 
How are you getting the audio signal from the mixer into your computer? Plugging into the mic/line-in on your laptop? If so, that's the issue. The OEM soundcard in your laptop probably has $0.39 worth of components that are doing the A-to-d conversion. You need an audio interface. read this sticky about mixers and home recording.
 
In what way was the quality poorer than with the mac?

Was the sound distorted? Hissy? Crackly? Or was it quite clean but a bit "echo'ey" and perhaps ill defined?
If the former three then there is a level mismatch between the output of the mixer (which, BTW is a very good one of its type) and the Acer input and that input MUST carry the label "Line Input" not mic. I will probably risk stoning for saying this but PROVIDED you get the levels correct going into a computer's internal sound card the results should be quite acceptable,. The problem is, peeps rarely DO get them right!

If this seems to be the issue it can be fixed with a very cheap device. The Behringer UCA202 USB interface. Better of course would be a proper audio interface. It would be interesting to know exactly what the mac setup is?

If however the sound is echo'ey etc that is room effect and will need taming by ereting some absorbent material, duvet are a common choice, in front of and behind the microphone.

Dave.
 
Im a Mac user so Im not sure about this, but....I have seen it brought up numerous times around here that when using a PC with some operating systems, an adjustment needs to be made in the PCs preferences for the input level. Its default is 100% and people were lowering it to down around 5%. If I am off in left field I apologize. Any one confirm or deny?
 
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