I just bought a mic today at Best Buy; it''s an ATR20 for $20, so yeah, it''s cheap. The strange thing is that I''m getting a continuous and random sounding hiss from the new mic, but with a cheap PC mic I borrowed from a friend there isn''t any hiss. The mic I borrowed from my friend is on a stick and is white, and is from Creative. Why am I getting this noise, and what kind of mic can I plug into my PC without getting that constant hiss, or am I doomed to use a stick mic? I like the sound from my new mic, but the noise is unacceptable for recording. Oh yeah, by the way I''m using it for vocals.

Hmm, continuous, but random sounding? If it is there at all times, you can use the Noise Reduction utilities on the modern sound editing studios to identify and remove, but better not to have it at all. Of course, I don''t know what it sounds like so I couldnt say for sure what is doing it, but try taking it back and replacing it with a like model, perhaps there is a unit defect.

Air flow can really cause problems for mics. put the mic in a drawer and close it, and see if the hiss goes away. If it does, get a foam hood for it.

Don''t listen to me. I''ve had too much coffee.

If your mic is just sensitive to ambient air currents and the like, you could/should probably rig your recording environment to make it as dead as possible. Short of buying portable recording booths, try to distance your mic from your equipment, muffle your computer, and create as much of a dead air zone as possible. A simple way to do it for moderate effectiveness is to make a tent out of a medium thickness blanket, comforter or padding, and do your recording under said tent(or pad the room if you are recording in a small enough room.) If you can minimize the volume of your workspace to a comfortable level, you can minimize the ambient noise.

And be sure to sample several seconds of dead air during each take/session, so you can identify noise floors and filter out noise after that.

[edited by - krikkit on December 13, 2002 5:40:53 AM]

If this definitely isn''t a technical-hardware problem...

goldwave.com
Try that out. Make a recording, leave a second of silence at the end and apply the two filters (Effects>filter>noise reduction) and see what it''s like.
If you need more help on recording and simple editing, check out my tutorial about it here:
http://www.samods.com/index.php?cmd=article&aid=3

If this definitely isn''t a technical-hardware problem...

goldwave.com
Try that out. Make a recording, leave a second of silence at the end and apply the two filters (Effects>filter>noise reduction) and see what it''s like.
If you need more help on recording and simple editing, check out my tutorial about it here:
http://www.samods.com/index.php?cmd=article&aid=3

3 years ago I bought a 1$ magazine bundled with a micro and had the same problem : the micro was sensible to the blow of my voice. I solved the problem by putting loosely a handkerchief in front of the micro, and all is right !

----
David Sporn AKA Sporniket

quote: Air flow can really cause problems for mics. put the mic in a drawer and close it, and see if the hiss goes away. If it does, get a foam hood for it.

I''ll try that...I didn''t think about air currents. Is that why I didn''t have any problem with the Creative PC mic, because it''s almost completely shielded from air-flow? It really didn''t make any sense to me, and I''ve had this problem with 2 similar mics (not the same brand), so I guess it probably is air noise. I originally thought it was electrical line noise, but there''s no difference in the Creative PC mic cord and the cord that my mic has (except that it''s approximately 20 feet long and looks like it has a few nicks in it; would that make a difference?). Anyway, I''ll try the drawer test, and the blanket tent sound like a good idea. As soon as I get farther along with studying for finals I''ll give them a go. Thanks guys!

I did some tests. Putting the mic in a drawer had no effect. Moving the mic near the monitor and near my power strip made a low buzz (a sawtooth I think). My printer made kind of a chirping noise which I sometimes get. Dunno. Something wierd, though, the recordings pick up my mouse movement. What I mean is when I have the mic on and I move my mouse I get an audible reaction. Of course I do have a wireless mouse (Logitech Wireless Optical). I tested, and putting the mic right next to the mouse caused a high-pitched hum, but only at close distances and that hum was very regular whereas the noise I''m getting is more like static, although it has a periodicity of about 3 seconds; I get about 3 seconds of static, then half a second of quiet, then the same 3 seconds of static, etc. It''s really strange. I guess I should try to post an audio recording of the sound. Is posting an audio file on my webpage the only option, or is there some way to upload audio files with GameDev?

What kind of sound card do you have? Is it built into your motherboard? You''ll have to make any files available elsewhere, too.