Best Sample Rate for Audio Recordings

Is it voice or music or what? We can hear up to about 20 kHz and you need to sample at double that to be able to sample every audible frequency. That is why the sample rate of CDs is 44100 Hz. Usually for a narration, 22050 Hz is fine.

Also trying moving the mic away from your face some, and see if that helps.

Yeah, voice recording. I'm at 22050Hz, 16bit mono, so maybe it's just my mic. The quality sounds good, I'm just trying to figure out a way to reduce those annoying "ss" sounds.

Yep, exactly. Especially with words that end in "s," its as if I'm whistling through my teeth. Maybe it's my speech, but I'm hoping there's a way I can fix that. I'll try moving the mic further up. Thanks for the tip!

I found the same thing with Sennheiser which I bought because I thought it would be better but it has a very wide range. You can record at any rate you like but then filter it with some bass or reduce the frequency with a filter.

In the end a $10 headset worked a lot better and the only reason I bought the expensive one was that my logitech had a buzz but it turns out just that model.

Go Figure.

Quentin

Hmmm... in that case I may have to pick up a new mic and give that a shot. Anyone have a good suggestion for a setup for voice recording? I'd be willing to shell out a couple hundred bucks if necessary.

Mic's are made to speak past not into, for Males place the mic at chin level, but on the side not directly in front of your mouth, slightly pointing up to the tip of your nose.

For Females, place the mic on the side level with the tip of your nose with the mic pointing downwards towards your chin.

Make sure your mouth and throat are in proper alignment.

Here's how:
Make a "L" with your thumb and fore finger
Place your thumb on your collar bone (there is a slight notch for your thumb) With your finger pointing straight up, the tip of your finger should be in the cleft of your chin.

With this position, your throat should be open and give you resonance from your chest and into your face ("mask")

Mark Riddle

Move the microphone farther from your mouth, and practice making your "S" sounds a little differently. If you say the letter "L," the tip of your tongue presses against what's called the alveolar ridge. Move the tip of your tongue to press against the bottom teeth, and the middle of your tongue to almost press against this ridge, and keep your teeth separated. The restricted airflow produces an "S" sound that expels air downward instead of outward, and doesn't blow wind across the microphone.

As far as sampling rate goes, use the lowest one that sounds good. Experiment. I've dropped as low as 7500 Hz; 11025 usually works well for male voices, 22050 is often better for female.

As others have suggested, try adjusting the position of the mic.

Here's a setup I think is great:

An Audio-Technica 8HEx Headset Mic -- $59 at Amazon and elsewhere

Any of a number of small USB mixers. The prices range from $79 to $249 or so. Unfortunately most sites aren't very good at returning useful results when you search for "usb mixer".

In particular, look at:

Alesis MultiMix 4 USB Mixer -- $78 at Amazon

Yamaha Audiogram 3 USB Recording Interface -- $120 at Amazon

Edirol also has several that work. I have the M-16 DX, but they have a smaller version.

Using an outboard interface ensures you'll get the highest quality audio.

Also, something that's not commonly known is that Apple computer products -- including all of their laptops -- have optical S/PDIF interfaces built-in on their mic and headphone jacks. Also, the analog I/O signals are interfaced with 24-bit 96kHz A/D-D/A converters. So an inexpensive outboard 4-channel analog mixer would work fine.

Most Windows-based machines only have 16-bit 44.1kHz converters, and no optical S/PDIF. And they tend to be very "noisy" interfaces.

But the USB interface will usually give you access to multiple channels in your audio editor with the proper drivers loaded up. (The M-16 DX shows up as a 16-channel mixer in Logic and other software on the Mac, and several audio editors under Windows.)

-David

Awesome! Thanks for the suggestions and detail there. Looks like I'll be picking up a USB Mixer to go with my new mic.