Microphone giving bad quality recording

[Eliomiller]

Hello. I hope to get some help on this.I got a mic that I use on my violin to amplify the sound when live. I'm usually satisfied with the result (amplified) during isolation of the sound but when I record (I got the old mixcraft 6) using it the sound is really flat and lose its brightness.
My configuration:
The mic is plugged to the microphone jack on the ACM which is plugged to the sound blaster ZxR .

I'm trying to fizzle around in the creative software but I'm not getting It right. It's getting better/ then worse. I don't know if there's anything within mixcraft.any idea?
Thanks in advance for your help( I know I'm dumb asking such question)

 

[Sasqui]

I used to have a similar setup with a guitar, voice mic and a Behringer mixer up front, but recorded one track through creatives software on the "what you hear" setting. Playback really did sound exactly like the live output from the speakers. Not sure whats going on with yours. Can you use the creative sw to record and check the quality of that? What is an ACM?

 

[Eliomiller]

The acm is the module in the front. It comes with the creative Zx and Zxr and can be used to control volume and got jack ports in it. It got a built in mic for gaming but I never used it much for this. What ports in the card use what u hear function? I saw it in the sound devices list but I don't know where it plugs.

 

[Jetster]

Just use Mixcraft effects to clean it up.

 

[Eliomiller]

It's not about it not being clean. It just don't have the brightness and the vibration of the live performance. I tried to use what u hear. It improved the quality drastically but theres some noise I can clean using mixcraft filters and even noise reduction from control panel. I guess I can get it further by taking a direct signal from the card without passing through the ACM but I'll have to wait for tomorrow to test this out.
Fun fact: having a hardtime playing correctly whem testing because of the hand rests of my chair and the bow constantly hitting my mouse .

 

[jboydgolfer]

If its Occurring only with record+playback ,it sounds to me like a compression issue or some type of bit rate or quality setting issue. And I my immediate assumption would be that it's not the microphone but rather some medium in between.

I wish I could be of more help. When I used to do bass track recordings for local musicians (wayy back), I remember an instance like this with someone's quality ,when it was played back after recording but sadly I wasn't in charge of those matters ,& cannot offer resolution

Best of luck

 

[Eliomiller]

I got some latency issue as I'm choosing between wave/Asio/waveRT. Tried the creative Asio which is great but I have my speakers set to realtek audio (shame on me) so it don't get out. I tried Asio4Allv2 but can't get it right. For testing I used the standard wave(not ASIO) as its easiest to tweak. I set the bit rate to 24 bit and frequency to 192000hz. 4 buffer each of 8192 in size. If latency in this configuration is 28ms. Anyone who know better in such stuff is welcome to help me as Im just going crazy.

 

[Sasqui]

What ports in the card use what u hear function?

I never was able to get the front panel on my old SB to work. I plugged it into the input in on the card itself.

 

[Eliomiller]

It improved drastically with what u hear. Tried to mess up with more settings around to improve the quality further. Thanks for the help. I don't know how the buffer size and number affect the quality till now though.

 

[Beastie]

What microphone are you using? Are you getting decent db levels? Maybe the mic input doesnt have enough gain.

A couple of side notes-
Latency shouldn't affect the sound quality. If the buffer was too small you might get clipping or artifacts but it wouldn't cause recordings to sound flat or dull.
24 bit 192k is total overkill unless you have very high quality microphones and hardware, if you go down to 96k or 48k I doubt you will be able to tell the difference.

 

[Eliomiller]

I Selected 192khz because it lowered the latency idk why. I got a myers feather mic. Giving 30db gain.

 

[Beastie]

I Selected 192khz because it lowered the latency idk why. I got a myers feather mic. Giving 30db gain.

That microphone is active, so it should be fine as long as the battery isn't dead.

How are the db levels when you monitor the recording in mixcraft? Ideally they should have peaks at 0db. If too low you might get a muffled sound.

I'd try to take the Realtek out of the equation as the quality isn't as good as the creative card and there may be some mix up between the settings using both at once (I've experienced older creative soundcards being quite finicky about this).
I have the onboard Realtek sounds totally disabled and put everything through my focusrite usb audio.

You shouldn't have to mess around with filters and stuff in mixcraft to get a half decent recording, if it doesn't sound ok with the dry recording there is a problem to start with.

ASIO drivers are usually pretty reliable so I'd use ASIO if you can.