John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I have a Samson C-valve Preamp, with a Samson condenser mic hooked up to it, and from the preamp to my laptop. My friend has the same thing except his is newer and he has a PC instead of laptop and his sounds real good. My Vocals sound more like its being used on a regular computer mic and i can hear the air hissing in the background, and you can tell that im recording in a room because the beat and vocals doesnt sound like one. It sounds like the beat is a sound itself seperated from the ugly vocals. What could be the problem? I tried adjusting knobs, nothins workin.

I guess you didn't like the reply that I already gave you to the exact same duplicate question you already asked in the design forum, but I'll give it to you again, in the hope that you might like it better this time:

---

There is an announcement at the top of the forum about what to do to assure getting as many responses as possible. The announcement leads to this post. Actually, several people, who are experts on this forum, will not reply if you don't do what is written in that post. Many others who are very helpful, will not reply out of respect for the moderators' wishes.

That said, there are many things that could be causing your problem: Since you posted your question on a studio design/construction forum, I guess you realize that your problem could very likely be with the space you are recording in, not with the equipment itself. To find out if that is the case, you need to record the exact same thing with both systems together, at the same time. Do that first in your friend's studio, then in your own studio. If you get bad results in both places while he gets good results in both places, then you have an equipment problem, not a room problem, so you are probably on the wrong forum in that case.

But if you both get identical good recordings in his room, and identical bad results in your room, then the issue really is with your studio, and in that case you are definitely on the right forum!

Follow the instructions in the post I linked to above, do the tests in both rooms with both systems, and let us know the results.


- Stuart -

No where in your description did I see what kind of soundcard, or interface you were using. Which is likely your problem. Built in, internal sound devices are not designed for professional audio applications. They have both high noise floors and low headroom (they are noisy, and will quickly clip) lots of self noise (again, they're noisy) and poor conversion (it makes your source sound bad). I'd recommend some kind of USB, or Firewire (if your laptop supports it) audio interface. There is no amount of knob tweaking that can get you past that.