Lapel microphone recording sounds gurgling and distorted

  • Thread starter Thread starter DjordjeR
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DjordjeR

New member
Hello,

I am using Warless Lavalier Microphone to record my YouTube videos (e.g., ), but my voice does not sound natural. It has gurgling and distorted effects although the meter levels during recording did not go below -10 dB. The recording level was set at 70%. Also, I am using Audacity to record my audio. I also tried using Samsung Galaxy android cellphone for recording and I noticed the same issue. It seems like there is clipping and the gain is too high, but the meter bar never shows any clipping issue.

Your suggestions to improve sound quality in my videos are very much appreciated.

Best regards,
DjordjeR
 
If it is a wireless lav, you could have the gain on the transmitter or receiver too high. Then you would be distorting that, before you even got to the computer interface.
 
Thanks for getting back to me.

I don't have any button on the microphone or receiver to adjust gain. How to adjust the gain in that case?
 
I suspect you just have a budget wireless microphone - what is it, and we can perhaps double check for you. I have actually had a really cheap one that made that noise, and it is NOT normal, but a combination of deviation, bandwidth, filtering and perhaps even mismatched companding. If you buy decent quality radio systems, everything matches - but swapping brand A for brand B, even if on the same frequency can easily produce these nasty artefacts.
 
I ordered new lapel microphone in the meantime; this one: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CRR3XM3V?psc=1&smid=AJY4P6899LZIE&ref_=chk_typ_imgToDp.

The current one is indeed cheap option. It's this microphone that I have in the video: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CHN2FQKD?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1. The microphone has good reviews on Amazon, so I thought it would be a good buy. I hope the one I ordered now will work better. It has gain control button on the receiver (in relation to Farview comments above)
 
I think it likely that none of us here would have bought those products. However, the neewer might be acceptable. The old adage is that the most expensive radio mic is nearly as good as a $10 mic cable. If you are doing videos where a cable is possible - then decent mics that will plug into your phone are going to be much better. The Neewer is perhaps going to be OK? If not send it back. Probably for an android I would have looked at the Rode Wireless Go II. Rode are well known for making decent mic, and have a better reputation (and they're cheaper too in many cases?

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Thanks for this suggestion. I will check Neewer microphone when it arrives and return it if it is not good. I'll replace it with a cable microphone (only USB C, and not AUX, works with my) Samsung Galaxy or I will look into the Rode Wireless Go II.

A few more comments on the existing one. I tried on different computers, different phones and different recording software packages, and the clipping was always there although the software never showed that the sound levels are too high.
 
I suspect they weren’t high, just a poor wireless system
 
Thanks for this advice "The old adage is that the most expensive radio mic is nearly as good as a $10 mic cable." I am a novice in this field, so I thought these days wireless and wired lapel microphones are of similar quality.
 
Absolutely not! Wireless is compromised by so many things. In audio we strive for the purest path from source to destination, but with radio we are converting audio to RF, and then back again. Often to travel a few feet. If a cable is impossible, we have to use radio, but to do it with errors is impossible. Even on the best systems they glitch. I’ve been looking at booking a person for a show this year. We will have the best system, not certain if it will be Shure or Senheiser yet, but ten weeks pay for a person to babysit it. Their job is to monitor signal strength, battery levels, interference etc and watch out for unexpected dead spots, antenna placement changes, damage to the packs, mics and all the continual faffing with putting mics on people and keeping the, in the right place when they are moving around.

We even put TWO separate systems on key people!

I hate the damn things. Only last week one show had an early sound check, so that was one set of batteries. New set in for the first half. Battery voltages were dropping very quickly, so another set, just in case, for the second half of the show. In a studio, you can say stop, and rebattery, but my guess is in your case, nobody noticed the poor audio until you had finished, because you did not have somebody monitoring like we would have done, because we know the damn things need babysitting!

Worse, is that most radio systems compress on transmit, and on receive expand, to maintain better signal to noise, and of course once you have two or more, intermod distortion often produces odd sounds. Digital ones solve many problems, but hide others up to the point when they just stop, suddenly, with no warning. These often do have very good audio quality, with only a little latency, but they are also very expensive.

To put cost into perspective, the mics themselves that connect to radio systems could cost very little, like the ones we are talking about here, but quality ones, for singing would cost more than that whole system you have ordered. The cost of the micss often used in cheaper whole systems might be $10, tops. Look up the cost of a DPA headset, it is scary.

Your use is close in, so you perhaps can avoid all the problems of weak signals and radio interference, but remember to get good reliable radio, an antenna could cost you a grand, and you need two!
 
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