How are USB Mics and Sound Cards Related?

  • Thread starter Thread starter giordano1000
  • Start date Start date
G

giordano1000

New member
Hi there,

I'd like to set something up for my wife so that she can record music on our PC. I currently have a Blue Snowball USB Microphone and Sound Blaster Audigy sound card that I picked up at Wal-Mart a couple of years ago. I'm running an HP Pavilion with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core processor, 2.81 GHz and 2 gigs of Ram. Windows XP.

The setup has worked fine thus far, but when I compare my wife's recordings to those of her peers, I notice a lot more hiss or white noise (or whatever it happens to be called) in her recordings. Her recordings are tip-top, but in comparison to others there's noise. Several of her friends use Blue USB mics but their recordings sound way more crisp and clean. Many of them use Macs, but I know a PC is just as capable of producing a crisp clean recording.

I've tried manually reducing the noise in Mixcraft, the recording software she uses, but to no avail. She even sent some of her MP3s to a friend who is good with audio but he was unable to totally eliminate the noise either.

So I'm looking into getting a better sound card, thinking this might do the trick. But I really don't know. How do USB mics interact with sound cards? The Blue Mic is a decent enough mic (for beginners, I'm guessing) but is its quality lost on a cheap sound card? Any thoughts?

I'm all for spending some money and upgrading, but I have no idea where to even start when it comes to sound cards. Oh, and no, I don't want a Macintosh right now. I'd like to keep the Blue Snowball, but what are my other options? Thanks.
 
Abandon those ideas of a USB mic and sound card.
What you want to do is download reaper as your recording software get a small interface like the Tascam US 122MK11 USB 2.0 audio interface and a real microphone.

You notice a night and day difference in the quality of the recordings. ;)
 
moresound said:
Abandon those ideas of a USB mic and sound card.
What you want to do is download reaper as your recording software get a small interface like the Tascam US 122MK11 USB 2.0 audio interface and a real microphone.

You notice a night and day difference in the quality of the recordings. ;)
Click to expand...

+1
USB mics are not the way to go for many reasons.
 
Good advice already, but more to the point on the hissing. Check the room you're recording in. Look for a noise source, like maybe your computer or the heat/AC system. Can you adjust audio levels on the mic? If so, adjust that first, then adjust in software. There's a term that floats around called Gain Staging and it basically means to set your levels properly starting at the sound source and work your way to the recording medium (in this case, the computer). In you example, you only have the mic and any Trim/adjustment in Mixcraft.

Posting a sample might help others to solve the unwanted noise.

Also, I don't agree with my friend's (Moresound) advice on Reaper. While reaper is good, you already have Mixcraft and it basically does the same thing.
 
Well, to try and answer the orginal question.

A USB microphone is simply a mic that has a small "USB sound card" built in. With a conventional interface, the analogue signal from the mic is amplified by a mic pre-amp, sampled and converted to digital, then this is fed to the computer. In the USB mic, the whole process happens inside the mic. When you use a USB mic, your sound card is not involved in the process at all, other than for later playback.

Some can be okay but, for obvious reasons, the electronics are often not as good (and certainly not as flexible) as what you can get in a dedicated interface.

Noise tends not to happen in the digital domain; the two most common sources of noise are the microphone itself and the pre-amp that converts the very low signal from the mic to a higher, more useful level. Often noise gets worse when an overly low signal is amplified--because this process amplifies the noise as well.

In your particular situation, the advice given already is good. If there is a level adjustment on the mic itself then you may find that bringing this up will give you more voice level (thereby meaning the noise is at a lower relative level--hence the phrase "signal to noise ratio".

You should also check for things like a background noise from heating/cooling or the computer (though from your description I doubt this is the issue).

The last thing I'd check is that you don't somehow have the open-circuit in a second track, perhaps the other half of a stereo track. Sound Blaster cards are notoriously noisy and more suitable for gamers than serious sound recording. Again, I suspect this is unlikely.

However, if neither of these work, then the advice to get a specialist sound card and a "real" microphone is likely the long term solution.

Bob
 
Thanks guys, this is precisely the info I needed. I suspect this whole Blue Snowball mic thing is one of those deals (like Bose headphones and iPods) where a lot goes into marketing and making the thing look pretty and shiny, but when it comes to actual hardware it's not much better than generic stuff.

I guess a better way to describe the noise on the mic is that it picks up a lot of "room noise" if that makes any sense. Other amateur recordings don't seem to have that at all, and I don't know exactly why. I will look for a way to configure the mic's levels, but it's strictly plug-and-play and came with no software of its own or anything like that. Maybe there's something on Mixcraft that can be adjusted.

I like the idea of getting an audio interface and real mic, though.

Another question I have is regarding "lag" while recording. Is there a way so that my wife can hear the audio she's recording over her headphones at the exact moment she's recording it? As it is now she records her guitar, then goes back and records her voice while listening to the guitar-- but of course the voice recording lags by a second or two so she has to manually reconfigure the voice track to get in sync with the guitar track... Is this just a symptom of the USB mic or would the same thing occur without it?

Would an audio interface reduce (or eliminate) that audio lag? Is that even possible?

Thanks for the info.
 
Yes an audio interface will help with the lag. Interfaces typically have ASIO drivers that will cut that lag down to 10-20 milliseconds (which is like sitting 10 - 20 feet away from some speakers). It depends on a lot of variables, but it wont be anywhere close to 2 seconds. There is also ASIO4ALL drivers that work with any sound card.
 
Good advice here. Lose the audigy and get a mic with an XLR connector.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top