PC Microphone issue

Psycho_X52

Since 2006 I had 4 microphones, but none functioned properly.
The first was attached to some cheap headphones. Back then I had an Realtek AC'97 sound card.
The problem was that the recording had a huge background noise....like I was recording near a jetplane.
Then I bought a pair of A4Tech AH-800. Perfect output sound, horrible input sound.
Now I have a desktop mic and a pair of Teac HP-5. The headphone mic functioned well (better than AH-800) a few days, then it started making that background noise again. I'm using now Realtek HD Audio soundcard with noise cancellation, but it's not 100% efficient, and it also lowers the speech volume.
The Logitech desktop mic is a little better than all above, but you have to speak near to it and pretty loud.

What should I do? Could it be the soundcard's fault?
I wanted to buy some microphones from ebay, but the shipping price is 10 times the price of the product Sad

AftershockVibe

Hmm, that's a lot of different hardware with the same underlying problem. Now, you might have been unlucky and just had a crappy soundcard twice but before you do investing in something better you might want to look for other forms of interference first.

Basically, none of your equipment will be very well insulated so magnetic interference might be what's causing the annoying background noise. This is caused by anything electronic or if it's moving and made of iron or steel.

Chief culprits: fans, speakers, transformers, hard disks.
It could however be anything with crappy wiring or a loose connection which unfortunately means most of your computer.

You could try turning some of those devices off or moving them further away from your microphone, mic wire, and input to your soundcard.

Cool

datadoc

I understand the problems with sound cards are usually the same no matter how many times you change the mic or how many devices you have around you. I had the same problem with my old pc when I was trying to record really old music from 33 lp's. I finally had to get a soundblaster audigy and a professional microphone and an adaptor for it from radio shack to get the high quality that I was seeking. Maybe this will help you out some.

TomGrey

Maybe my problem is a bit different -- no input at all.

Do you have any diagnostic programs to help identify if a sound card is bad?

Psycho_X52

I've bought from eBay (China) a n USB audio 3D adaptor (unde 1$ Very Happy

) and the output sound is mouch louder and clear (I have a feeling it's not quite 3D....). On the oder hand the mic generates continuous noises like in a military transmission area (morse code.. ti-ti-ti...)
I've now ordered an USB headset. Maybe it will do the trick.

One more thing: It may be a problem in the main board. I have a USB mouse with PS/2 adapter and if I turn the speakers loud and move the mouse it generates a hiss. I plugged the mouse into the USB and that sound was gone.

@TomGrey

Do you have a control panel for your audio card? I have (as I mentioned in the first post) Realtek HD Audio and I can set all the 3.5mm to be for output (5+1 like).