Computer recording quality/ Real audio problem

[larryamon]

I'm using a digital audio labs card deluxe, a folio notepad and cool edit and sennheiser mics. Here's my problem, I'm recording voice only and the wav files sound fine but when I convert to real audio I'm getting a lot of crunchy sound on the voices. I know that realaudio isn't the best format but I need to use real audio for circumstances beyond my control and I need to set it to 20kbs. I have heard professional audio in real audio format at the same level that sounds good for what it is without the crunch. I need help as to where I can improve quality to fix this problem.

Thanks.

 

[Bulls Hit]

20kbps is pretty coarse. Try encoding at a higher rate and see if you still get noise

 

[larryamon]

I have to keep it at 20kbps. I know the overall quality isn't great and I don't expect it to be. But I can take a professionally recorded file and convert it to real audio at that level and not have the problem, but it's only when I take the file that I have recorded and convert it that it has the problem. Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[AlChuck]

Is there an option for variable bit rate as opposed to constant bit rate in Real Audio like there is with MP3s?

That might make a huge difference.

 

[larryamon]

I'm guessing it's probably not so much real audio but a quality problem with my recording that becomes more apparent in real audio. Any suggestions on how to improve overall recording quality?

Thanks for the replies so far.