line in, mic?? !

  • Thread starter Thread starter WEBCYAN
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WEBCYAN

WEBCYAN

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On another post some guy said "this might seem obvious, but plug your mic into the line in input instead of the mic input on the soundcard."

Well, um, I had always plugged it into the mic jack.

Is there really a difference in quality?
 
the mic in amplifies the signal which can cause unwanted distortion. for about 7 months i wondered why my distorted guitar sounded really really shitty. spent countless hours researching and trying mic'ing techniques. but the day i bought a j-station (direct recording unit) i found out that ops, plugging into mic input = bad.

somewhere else on this website is a faq and it says dont plug mic into mic input

eddie

ps you might needa crank up the recording level in windows (double click the speaker in task tray and go to recording options) and might needa normalize the volume in a wav editor, but dont use mic input

here we go. after a bit of searching around: https://homerecording.com/sound_card_basics.html

readthat page for lots of other good info, but this quote applies to this topic

a mic input jack (with a 1/8" stereo minijack). Here's what you should do with this: nothing. It's not meant for music mics at all. It's designed specifically for computer mics. The fact that it has 3 connections should give you a hint that there's something weird about this jack. Pretend it's not there and don't plug a thing into it, especially a microphone! One guy who wrote to me was tearing his hair out in frustration because his recorded sound was so distorted; it turned out he was recording through his computer mic that he forgot was plugged in there...
Click to expand...
 
unless you use some sort of preamp you HAVE to go into the Mic In of the soundcard...while this might not give the best results, without a preamp it is the only option.....
 
that makes sense. but my reading on the subject says you shouldnt be recording without a pre-amp before the mic anyway :)

eddie
 
MIC >> MIC IN = sounds bad

MIC >> MIC PRE >> LINE IN = sounds better*

* depending of course on the quality of your mic, the pre, the soundcard and your singing...
 
The whole issue here is that a microphone signal requires boosting (preamplification) of it's signal (raising its mV signal to "line level" or ~ 1-5 V) to be used by the computer.

The "mic" port of your soundcard has a built in pre-amp to do this. The "line in" port does not.

If you plug into the "mic" port, you will be using the sound card's pre-amp. Generally these are of pretty poor quality. So while it works, the results are pretty piss poor.

If you plug into the "line in" port of the sound card, then you must amplify the signal somehow. Normally this is done by using a standalone preamp, or a mixer. In either case, the pre-amps in these devices tend to be of much higher quality than the ones built into a sound card, and consequently they should yield better sounding results.

Note, you can not plug a mic directly into the line-in connection of your sound card. (Well, you can physcially do this :) , but the signal is too weak to get any usable results. If you connect to the "line in", you need to pre-amplify the signal first.)
 
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