USB microphone crackle

[paultill]

Hello everyone

I have just got a Samson Q1U USB microphone and with the software they've sent (Cakewalk music creator 3). I get a kind of distorted crackle).


Sampling rates and very low and high input volumes don’t seem to make any difference but one thing that does is changing the latency - increasing it to full (348.3msec) does clean a lot of it up but there still remains some crackle. When it's dropped really low there’s an almost constant feedback like noise. I’m hoping this might hint at the problem.

I’ve also installed it on my laptop as well as PC and the same occurs (both record through the soundcard with excellent sound).

(Of course I initially used the default settings (Music Creator has a utility called the Wave Profiler that can usually automatically detect the type of sound card that you have installed and configure its settings for best performance).

(I’m using a realtek soundcard on both)

Any help anyone can offer any advice it really would be much much appreciated

Regards
paul

 

[soundguruman]

Hello everyone

I have just got a Samson Q1U USB microphone and with the software they've sent (Cakewalk music creator 3). I get a kind of distorted crackle).


Sampling rates and very low and high input volumes don’t seem to make any difference but one thing that does is changing the latency - increasing it to full (348.3msec) does clean a lot of it up but there still remains some crackle. When it's dropped really low there’s an almost constant feedback like noise. I’m hoping this might hint at the problem.

I’ve also installed it on my laptop as well as PC and the same occurs (both record through the soundcard with excellent sound).

(Of course I initially used the default settings (Music Creator has a utility called the Wave Profiler that can usually automatically detect the type of sound card that you have installed and configure its settings for best performance).

(I’m using a realtek soundcard on both)

Any help anyone can offer any advice it really would be much much appreciated



Regards
paul

The crackle comes from overloading the microphone with too much signal. The microphone or mixer input should have a "PAD" or "attenuator" that lowers the sensitivity of the microphone. If you plug this directly into the computer microphone input, the computer has an audio mixer with a mic level control.
Double click the speaker icon in the lower right hand of the computer screen, then click "mixer." OR open the computer audio software, look for the mixer or microphone level control.
Once the level of the input is adjusted, the crackle should be eliminated.