Microphone/Sound Card Noise

[DavesGuitar]

Hi everyone, really hoping you can help. I play a few instruments and sometimes like to record my own stuff. I decided to get a better microphone, and purchased a 'Skytronic Cardioid Microphone 173.801.'. I tried a few mics in the music store and this one was great for Vocal and Guitar. Unfortunatly having got it back its just as bad as my old mics when recording on my laptop. I use Cool Edit and have a ' Realtek AC '97 Audio' soundcard. I know its not a brilliant sound card but all I want is noise free recording and what I get is full of noise (even silence). Also the mic is knowhere near as responsive as when it was plugged into the amps, and even when my mic is selected at max volume at audio controls I have to shout to get the desired volume. I fear the mic is too good for my crap soundcard and I may return the mic to the store. However if anyone can help me in making more of the setup I have I would be very appreciative.
Thanks
Dave

 

[TimOBrien]

The built-in soundcard "AC 97" is made only for beeps and boops.

You're just going to have to pony up for something better...

Something like this: Echo Audio Laptop Card or a USB interface if your laptop has USB ports.

 

[jhughs]

I just recently started trying to record using a PC myself. Are you using a pre-amp? The one consistent piece of advice I've been seeing is to use a preamp and channel it into the Line Input of the soundcard instead of going directly to the Mike Input. The Mike input was okay but lacking high end (which makes sense since I think the PC mfrs intended the mike for conversational voice recording, which in the telcomm world is 300-3,000Hz).


I looked at straight preamps / phantom power supplies and finally decided that if I'm going to do this right it's better just to get a small mixer so that I can set up two mikes and channel one into the left and one into the right channel. I opted for the Yamaha MG10/2 (about $100).