I''m trying to do some recording of my acoustic guitar in hopes of listening to myself, and learning how to imporove. Right now, I''m stuck with a cheapie computer mic (And I CANT buy a REAL mic, so dont ask). Right now, my recordings have lots of hissing (I''m using the windows built in recorder :/ ) and it doesn''t sound very clean. What are some good audio programs other than goldwave that are easy to use (more like supereasy) that will make my recording sound a little nicer?

Try something like sound forge. That always seems to record well and it has filters to remove noise as well.

No matter what you do, you''re not going to get a good sound out of a PC mic because its a nondondenser mic.

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quote: Original post by zer0wolf
No matter what you do, you''re not going to get a good sound out of a PC mic because its a nondondenser mic.

nondondenser?


Enlighten me.

lol... I mispelled that. Noncondenser. The mic itself doesn''t provide any physical shaping of the sound. A condenser mic rolls off the harsh and hiss.

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Some things you might try:
1. Use the shortest cables possible and be sure they are shielded.
2. Use the fewest adapters possible but if you have to then get ones with gold tips.
3. Try turning off the monitor while recording and see if that was causing some of the noise.
4. If you have any dimmer-switch lights in the room, shut them off... dimmers often make tons of noise.
5. Place the mike as close as possible to the guitar to get the best signal possible.
6. Try recording when there is less traffic outside and no one is mowing their lawn.
7. Keep power cables and audio cables separated. Power cables are noisy. Also don''t let audio cables go near power strips.

Unfortunately, acoustic guitar puts out a lot of harmonics in the sounds, so using a cheap mic will remove a lot of the beautiful textures. You may be able to get rid of a lot of noise, but you can''t bring back those textures if the mic didn''t capture them!

-solo (my site)

quote: Original post by zer0wolf
lol... I mispelled that. Noncondenser. The mic itself doesn''t provide any physical shaping of the sound. A condenser mic rolls off the harsh and hiss.

I''d venture to say that most guitar recordings in this world has been made on "nondondenser" mics. The most common mic for guitar work is the Shure SM57, which is a dynamic microphone.


AnkhSVN - A Visual Studio .NET Addin for the Subversion version control system.

the SM57, while often used for live performances, isn''t the choice mic for studio applications. Also, the SM57 does have a uniform cardioid pickup pattern, which does help with its sound quality

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Moved to Music and Sound from the Lounge

If you have the money buy a guitar with a built in "is it called pickup?" built in 1/4" jack from there you could either....

buy

Line 6 USB guitar port

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/aug02/articles/line6.asp

or run the guitar to an amp from the amp to a DI box and straight into a mixer or your computer

if your using any kind of mic going into a computer you will have background noise

atlest use a mic that runs into a mixer/usb audio unit then run that into your computer it makes things so much cleaner sounding

I use a M Audio Quattro "USB input" with SoundFordge and so far its been a very clean sound

the reviews on it are either hate it or love it so far I love it other then the fact it gets really hot

when I was helping my friend out that works at a studio when we were doing live recs we would use either a DI box or a SM57 but the SM57 was always on the amp not the guitar


Jeff