I read your comment (below) about taking out breath sounds and mouth noises. I’m using the all new Adobe Audition CS5.5. Where would I find the same tools you have in Soundbooth? I have so much trouble with mouth clicks and heavy breaths. I wind up going through and cutting these noises out, but if there’s is a repair software built in to CS5.5 I need to know where it is. Help! Thanks David.

Ed

To take out breath sounds and mouth noises I use Adobe’s Soundbooth. It is fantastic for cleaning up the audio for the final product.

Which one of these is equavalent to the stereo mix option for the mbox?
The mic works great I selected the mbox in playback I can hear through the headset but cannot stream or broadcast to chat room? Any ideas? or suggestions?

Thanks

A small amount of sound proofing will go a long way… recording with curtains behind you helps, recording with a blanket on top of you helps drastically, the idea is to mute everything around you and minimize the sound reverb and echo. I don’t use protools but I’m sure you can use the soundgate feature though you’ll need to (again) experiment with it so that you don’t lose frequencies from your voice. Honestly if I were you I would look keep looking on the blog circuit for someone who uses a mac and an mbox (half the VO folk out there have that setup). I have the cheapo setup which is Adobe Audition, CEntrance Pro and a Rode Nt1-A.

Sorry I couldnt be of more help. You should try some of the LinkedIn forums and maybe the voiceoveruniverse.com vo equipment forums.

No I’m primarily a PC person but I did do some research and found an article on microphones and how to adjust the input level … here is an excerpt:
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No special drivers are necessary for the microphones to operate. When you plug them into your Mac, they appear as an input option in the Sound pane of System Preferences–identified as either USB Audio Codec (for the MXL and Samson mics) or by the microphone’s actual name.

The gain of the Podcaster and Snowball microphones can be adjusted via the Input Level slider in the Input tab of Sound preferences. This slider is grayed-out with the MXL and Samson microphones; instead, these mics include hardware controls for adjusting gain. On the MXL mic, this appears in the form of a three-position switch marked Lo, Med, and Hi. The Samson G-Track offers a gain knob marked Mic; once you’ve adjusted the gain to your liking, you press the knob to lock it in position. The G-Track also includes an LED that glows green until you over-power the mic, at which point the LED turns red. This is a nice touch as it makes it easy to adjust and test the gain without having to record a long segment, only to realize afterwards that the gain was too hot.
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The full article can be found here
So this is the part that we are interested in “the gain can be adjusted via the Input Level slider in the Input tab of Sound preferences”. Give that a whirl and let me know if decreasing the gain improves the sound or not.

taji

I kinda went through the same thing you went through but with a cardioid condenser mic called the MXL Studio 1 (its a USB mic) the mic was brilliant, warm and smooth but it picked up a fly’s fart at 20 paces.

One of the solutions I found for this issue is to lower the computer’s gain. That is the level at the computer end that accepts the digital input from your mic.

I usually do that by going to (if you are on a PC) Control Panel > Sound > Recording (then highlight your input device) > properties.

I found that my input level was at like 100… so I kept lowering it until I found a sweet spot at 7.

After that when I recorded the mic wasn’t as sensitive but on another note… I just read up on your mic here and it is in fact a cardioid mic so it isn’t recording anything behind it.

Try lowering the gain.
Taji