[Arny Krueger]

"Bill Bremmer" wrote in message

Hello,



I'm doing some voice production work at home for a local
radio station.
Using Cool Edit along with M Audio's Mobile-Pre, a
Pentium 3 computer, a Shure PG-58 mic, Windows XP.

When everything is powered up and the mic is on, I'm
showing a -54 dB reading on my Cool Edit screen. I think
that that is too noisy. Obviously, I can just about
eliminate any of this noise (hiss or system noise) by
using Cool Edit's Noise Reduction software after I have
recorded, but no matter what percentage of reduction I
use, I will hear some artifacts.

First we need to know the nature of the noise. It could easily be ambient
noise. You can check on that by simply using a long mic cable and moving the
mic to a quiet place much further away from the computer, burrying the mic
in a really big pillow, etc.

Can you post a MP3 file of the noise on one of those public access file
storage sites?


On the Mobile Pre, the gain control is set at about 4
o'clock, six is about maximum. The recorded wave form is
showing peaks at about 30%. I then must "normalize" the
recording to 95-100% for the final recording. It seems
that I should be getting more mic gain from the pre-amp,
so that I don't need to set the output gain to 4 o'clock
and then normalize in Cool Edit.

The PG-58 is a dynamic mic, and its output is not going to be really high.
Move it closer to the source, it is designed for close working.

I must use about a 12
foot USB cable to connect the pre-amp to the computer,
but I don't think that this is much of a factor.

Agreed.

If I wanted to improve the sound quality, without
spending a lot, what areas do you think I could improve?

Get a condensor mic, they usually have far higher output.