Q: MY MIC IS PICKING UP LOTS OF UNWANTED NOISE. HOW DO I GET RID OF IT?
A: The mic with higher quality will be more sensitive, and it will pick up more noise - unwanted ambient sound like typing and mouse clicks. Unless you’re recording in a vacuum, it’s impossible to get rid of all ambient sound from recordings. However, there are several things we can do to decrease it as much as possible.
1. Set proper mic input volume—this means setting an appropriate mic input level on your computer.
- To access the gain input in your PC’s control panel, go to Start Menu/Control Panel/ Hardware and Sound/ Sound
- Then navigate to the “Recording” tab, then right click your MIC.
- Go to ”Properties”, and click the ”Levels” tab.
- On a Mac, you would access that by:
- Going to System Preferences/ Sound/ Input, and adjusting the volume slider.
2. Adjust the microphone as close to your mouth as possible, it will help your mic focus on picking up your sound
3. Make sure you are in a quiet room, any noise created by keyboard, mouse or fan may be picked up.
In addition to proper gain staging, it’s important to isolate the sound source within the recording space. Here’s an article from Sound on Sound Magazine that explains heavy-duty solutions to soundproofing, please have a check;
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may08/articles/soundproofing.htm.