Record closer to the mic, record somewhere the room is quieter, play louder,

...

or beat your sound file over the head with a hammer, if you can't record it right.

Move it away from your pc/laptop fan, try various distances with less mic amplification etc. Playing close to the mic has usually the best results

Yea good idea, i've seen a lot of posts on the net about this mic being quiet. I generally record with an amp so i'll to try some positioning relative to that, hopefully i'll find a good medium. If that doesnt work i'll take auri's advice and beat my sound file XD

Thanks for the advice ^^

Find out exactly where the unwanted sound is coming from, you can't really fix a problem without understanding it first. In my case, I have a loud PC fan which I have to manually set to 0% every time I record.

How do you amplify the microphone ? Maybe some cheap input device ?

i think there are two problems, one is my current amp puts out a small hiss which they mic probably receives, and also i think if i boost the mics pickup volume too much it gets all this fuzz

The problem with the hissing amp can be solven white easily i think. When you're done with the recording, just record the hiss your amp makes, and reverse the phase on the "hiss-track"

As for the mic fuzz, they tend to need a pre-amp to get decent volume without distortion.

Ifver said

The problem with the hissing amp can be solven white easily i think. When you're done with the recording, just record the hiss your amp makes, and reverse the phase on the "hiss-track" As for the mic fuzz, they tend to need a pre-amp to get decent volume without distortion.

I actually never thought of that, does phase cancellation really work with hissing?

I was going to say he would need some type of phantom power, but I guess probably not since its a USB mic. It's either self powered(doubtful) or powered by the USB 2.0/3.0 port.

Another thing he can do is put some type of sound barrier such as a foam pad like 2 or 3 feet away opposite of where he's recording his guitar.

Yes, it should. The waves should cancel out each other and it will disappear. In worst case the hissing gets different when he plays, but it will probably still help a little.

I should have looked up that it was a USB mic we where dealing with here. Those are mostly made for recording speech as far as I know, so I don't think there is any ordinary way to get a better volume out of it. But I wouldn't mind being proven wrong here!

The foam idea might make for a drier and "purer" sound, but since you loose some of the natural reverb you might end up with an even quieter recording, but try and experiment, it might sound better

No, that doesn't cancel, because waves have phase and you aren't controlling for it. It might help though--can't hurt to try.

I don't know if it's going to help, but I also use a USB condenser microphone and I encountered the problem of low volume.

Since the microphone is a condenser one you can't record too close to the music source : you must find the best distance. But as a result the volume recorded is low.

I guess the solution I've found isn't the best, but I've been (at least until now) satisfied with it : I record the sound with Audacity and then I use a Compressor effect on the recorded track. Thus, the volume of the recorded track is way higher.