Why am I getting a flanging sound?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dr. Mindermast
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Dr. Mindermast

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I was trying to record an acoustic guitar track today using a mic near the body of the guitar, running directly into my computer. This has never given me problems before, but today it did. Specifically, it sounded like I was using a flanger pedal throughout the song. The problem persisted when I moved the mic to a different location and tried again. I know that I'm using low-quality equipment (cheap microphone from Best Buy plugged straight into a cheap laptop, recording in Samplitude Studio, which is the low end version of their software), but like I said, I've never had this problem with recording before. Can anyone give me some ideas of why I might be having this problem and/or what I can do about it?
 
Hey,
You could be hearing your direct audio and the processed audio simultaneously.
The processed audio will have slight latency compared to the direct audio, even if there are no effects in play.

Since you're just going straight into your laptop, I guess you're looking for windows mixer.
See if you can find some option that stops you being able to hear the mic, or just mute the track in your DAW while you're recording.
 
I think Steen has it right.

Tell us this; if you record it, do you only hear it DURING the recording process? Or does it sound like flanging even when you're just playing the audio back?
 
I wasn't listening during the recording process, as this is the first track I'm doing for this song (so there was nothing else to hear - the previous take was muted, and that one had the same flanging problem). I'm hearing it pretty clearly when I play back the audio afterward. I'll try recording again and make sure the monitor is off, so we'll see what happens with that...

UPDATE: whatever the problem was, it seems to have gone away when I closed everything and rebooted the computer. Memory load maybe?
 
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Update #2 - problem's back. I tried rebooting the computer again, and also turning off monitoring and playback-during-recording, to no avail (although I can't seem to turn off monitoring completely - it still comes back on when I hit the record button, and I can't seem to find a way to disable that). It occurred to me that it might be something about the acoustics of the room I was using, so I moved somewhere else but that doesn't seem to have helped.

Anybody have any other ideas?
 
psychojosh13 said:
I'm hearing it pretty clearly when I play back the audio afterward. I'll try recording again and make sure the monitor is off, so we'll see what happens with that...

UPDATE: whatever the problem was, it seems to have gone away when I closed everything and rebooted the computer. Memory load maybe?
Click to expand...

If it's happening on playback after recording then it's not a direct monitoring issue.
Are your drivers all up to date and what not?
 
There is a built-in mic, which isn't ideal but is at least better quality than I would have expected. It gave me the same problem when I tried it the other day.

I didn't think to check drivers, but I'll get on that. Anything I should make sure to update besides the sound card?
 
psychojosh13 said:
It gave me the same problem when I tried it the other day.
Click to expand...

I was going to suggest testing with the internal. Since you already confirmed it is flanging on both internal and USB, check drivers as Steen and others suggested.
 
Another thing to do is to you to your computer's audio control panel and shut down all system sounds. Close every other programme that might use audio even for alert beeps and so on.

Assuming Windows, go to the Recording Devices menu and disable all inputs other than the mic port you're using.

If your inbuilt sound card has some kind of software control panel (some do, some don't) go there and make sure any and all options are turned off. Some sound cards have features to "enhance" your audio, usually by adding some reverb/phase differences and messing it up totally.

Is the mic input on your computer a stereo jack? If so, as a quick check try plugging your mic in only as far as the first "click" rather than all the way. There might be some phase funnies if you're plugging a mono mic into a stereo jack.

Finally, and most important, write a letter to Santa asking for a USB interface and an XLR mic for Christmas! :)
 
Epilogue, for anyone who's still interested at this point:

I bought an XLR-to-USB adapter, and once I got it configured right that seems to have fixed the problem just fine. I recorded acoustic guitar and vocals today and got a nice clean sound on both. Thank you all for the help!
 
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