Beginner needs help! Mic is flangey...

[Arampus]

I got a cheap Sony mic (an F-V420 if anyone wants to Google it) to record guitar and vox on my PC with Cubase.

Every time it records guitar it comes out sounding sort of flange-y (told you I was a beginner) or whatever that sound is that's like when you blow air through your lips while expanding and contracting the apeture of your mouth.

It does this so much that the sound totally deteriorates. Is this a fault in the mic, or the wrong kind of mic, or something else? I know it's a cheap model, but I was recording on a tiny plastic condenser mic before (made for internet phone calling) and it was poor, but at least it was a steady sound. This sounds like I'm putting really bad effects through it - and I'm not!

Please help!

 

[MadAudio]

How do you have the mic connected to the computer?

 

[Phyl]

My 0.02...

Sounds like you've got two copies of the same signal beating against each other either during recording or playback. One of the copies is following a longer (or shorter path) than the other. Check out the signal path into the computer and insure that you aren't accidently recording the monitors outputs along with the guitar.

 

[Arampus]

Still clueless

I've had the mic first in the front mic socket of my Compaq PC, then I found one at the back. No change. There is no other mic attached.

I guess this does sound like mic phasing, as with two or more mics(?). Well, I think I tried making sure the signal wasn't duplicated somehow, but I'm not exactly sure how I check this. I 'hid' one of the instances of my soundcard (I think the split is there for stereo signals?) under 'VST inputs' in Device Setup, but that didn't help. As I say, the old titchy plastic desktop mic was fine, so I don't know how this is any different. I am recording, as ever, with headphones on so it can't be ordinary sound leakage. Is there some way the PC could be recording itself without a mic?

Thanks for trying to help though!

 

[kid klash]

It sounds like one of two things to me... are you listening to the recordings as a low resolution WAV or REAL file? They always sound "flangy" to me.

Or, do you have a paddle fan or plain old room fan in the room you're using the mic in? That'll give you an odd "flangy" type sound too.

 

[Han]

I am with Phyl, sounds like you have two versions of the same sound, but with different latency.

 

[crazydoc]

Every time it records guitar it comes out sounding sort of flange-y (told you I was a beginner) or whatever that sound is that's like when you blow air through your lips while expanding and contracting the apeture of your mouth.
Please help!

What is the frequency of this flanging effect? That is, how often does it sound like you're "opening and closing your mouth?" Once per second, less than that, or many times per second?

How about if you record voice or other material? Same effect? Accoustic or electric guitar? Recording it from amp speaker?

 

[Arampus]

I think the mic is [insert expletive]ed

I've already tried everything above - there's one mic, one guitar, no sound from speakers, it's all through my headphones. If there's another recording source that's doubling the signal, where is it? I really appreciate the advice, but I think I'll be returning the mic.

The flangey sound has no real pattern, it comes and goes in intensity - it *does* seem to depend on variation in volume, so it's worse when I go from loud to soft or vice versa, and anything fairly peaky (loud, but not too loud) is a mess. What it sounds a bit like is that there is some kind of over-the-top automatic compression in the mic - could this be a physical fault?

The mic records normal voice okay, but anything peaky and it squashes the signal to a quiet fuzzing noise, like an angry, dying wasp in a carboard tube (that is a very accurate description, believe me!). Before you ask, I'm not recording full blast and I've tweaked mic distance and record input levels. Still stuck.

I think the mic is [insert expletive]ed.