T
TheLinkster
New member
My girlfriend likes to record videos for posterity. What she does is play a song in WinAmp, then play along to the song on her flute while recording a video with Nero Vision (using Nero 9). She's saving these videos and compiling a library for her son for when he's older and she can't play anymore.
What she does is have her camera mounted on top of her monitor, which sits on a shelf on her desk. To the right of her monitor are her 2 speakers (Altec Lansing). Between those speakers is where she puts her mic. For the longest time she was using a Creative Webcam Pro with a Creative microphone. The ones you typically get with a webcam back before the mic was built into the webcam. She was using an old AMD 1500+ with WinXP Pro and all was well, but she wasn't happy with the video. The audio part was good enough. Not studio quality or anything, but okay for her needs. She upgraded the computer an i7-860 unit running Win7 x64 Premium. The camera didn't work anymore so I got her a MS Lifecam Cinema HD, which is much better than the Creative one.
The same Creative mic was plugged into the onboard audio same as before, but now there's a lot of background hiss when recording and a lot of static and clicks when the music is loud. I thought it might just be the mic levels so I lowered them and got rid of most of the clicks, static, and distoration but the hissing is still there when the music is quiet. I figured it was time to upgrade to a USB mic so I got her a Blue Snowflake. She thought the Snowball was too big. I got that hooked up and the hiss during quiet was gone, but now she gets a lot of distortion when the music is loud. Her frustration got the better of her and now there's no more Snowflake so I can't experiment with the mic levels. I remember I had it set to 42 with no boost since boost wasn't an option.
I was thinking of getting her a Blue Snowball because I heard it's better for recording music, particularly in loud environments because the gain on it is lower than the Snowflake so she shouldn't get the distortion or anything with it in omni-directional mode. However, I don't know of anybody else that records music the way she does and so I'm not sure if that's the best way to go. Budgets prevent us from getting high end mics and external sound cards or audio interfaces, although I'm sure she would love to try out some studio quality equipment. The onboard audio in her new HP computer is RealTek-888S if that helps.
Can anyone make a recommendation on the Snowball or suggest something else that could be done to make her old Creative mic work better? She doesn't like the mic built into the LifeCam because it doesn't pick up her flute over the music she's playing along to.
Thanks in advance!
What she does is have her camera mounted on top of her monitor, which sits on a shelf on her desk. To the right of her monitor are her 2 speakers (Altec Lansing). Between those speakers is where she puts her mic. For the longest time she was using a Creative Webcam Pro with a Creative microphone. The ones you typically get with a webcam back before the mic was built into the webcam. She was using an old AMD 1500+ with WinXP Pro and all was well, but she wasn't happy with the video. The audio part was good enough. Not studio quality or anything, but okay for her needs. She upgraded the computer an i7-860 unit running Win7 x64 Premium. The camera didn't work anymore so I got her a MS Lifecam Cinema HD, which is much better than the Creative one.
The same Creative mic was plugged into the onboard audio same as before, but now there's a lot of background hiss when recording and a lot of static and clicks when the music is loud. I thought it might just be the mic levels so I lowered them and got rid of most of the clicks, static, and distoration but the hissing is still there when the music is quiet. I figured it was time to upgrade to a USB mic so I got her a Blue Snowflake. She thought the Snowball was too big. I got that hooked up and the hiss during quiet was gone, but now she gets a lot of distortion when the music is loud. Her frustration got the better of her and now there's no more Snowflake so I can't experiment with the mic levels. I remember I had it set to 42 with no boost since boost wasn't an option.
I was thinking of getting her a Blue Snowball because I heard it's better for recording music, particularly in loud environments because the gain on it is lower than the Snowflake so she shouldn't get the distortion or anything with it in omni-directional mode. However, I don't know of anybody else that records music the way she does and so I'm not sure if that's the best way to go. Budgets prevent us from getting high end mics and external sound cards or audio interfaces, although I'm sure she would love to try out some studio quality equipment. The onboard audio in her new HP computer is RealTek-888S if that helps.
Can anyone make a recommendation on the Snowball or suggest something else that could be done to make her old Creative mic work better? She doesn't like the mic built into the LifeCam because it doesn't pick up her flute over the music she's playing along to.
Thanks in advance!