I feel your pain. I recently bought a new house, and the refrigerator makes some horrible noises, not as frequent as yours. Perhaps, every 4 hrs. Do you know how I found out about that? I tried to record the new song I composed on my computer.
While this thread is a few years old, some fundamental principles for improving audio quality remain relevant.
You mentioned using a c922 webcam to record sound and the idea of upgrading to an XLR-mic. While an XLR-mic can indeed improve audio quality, there may be other ways to address the...