Microphone volume too low when recording

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EricBuist

Active Member
Hi,
I'm trying to record a series on YouTube and noticing that my microphone audio is always low, no m atter what I try. I'm using a condenser microphone hooked up to an audio interface.

By default the mic sound only goes on the left channel. That's normal; the problem is that the recording tools are too dumb and record both channels, while only the left one is valid in my case; the other is silent. I cannot use a Y jack splitter cable, because that is a condenser microphone which requires phantom power through a XLR plug.

OBS, the last recording software I tried, is able to turn this mic input into mono, but I just noticed it merges the left channel with the silent right channel, causing a lower volume mix. I literally cannot find any way around this that would not make things super repetitive and inefficient. If I cannot find any better way than what I found, I'll have to stop recording, and I find it very disappointing not be able to record while others do.

I was able to configure OBS to create separate streams for my computer and my mic audio, but Corel VideoStudio just considers the first audio stream and ignores the rest. I tried to use ffmpeg to merge the streams and duplicate left channel of the mic stream, but it cannot do it, it just takes the left and right channels as they are. Seems I really have to use Audacity to record audio in mono, and OBS for video, but there's no way I'll be able to start them exactly at the same time, for the two files to be in sync. Moreover, I found no way in VideoStudio to synchronize two clips in different tracks so anytime I cut something in the video track, that automatically cuts in audio.

Seems I either have to get myself a dynamic microphone hooked up to a jack with Y splitter, or a low-end USB microphone that internally duplicates its signal, generating a fake stereo input for Windows. Or I could get another video editing software that would be able to handle multiple audio streams. The only alternative to VideoStudio I know of that has chances to do it right, not just work partially, is Premiere Elements, but it is literally unusable for me; everything is REALLY too small on its UI. Any idea of what microphone would be best for this, or waht video editing software would help post-processing the files without involving multiple manual steps in several different tools?
 

EricBuist

Active Member
Hi,
I ended up setting the microphone volume to 200% in the OBS mixer settings. I configured OBS to turn the mic signal into mono, which reduces volume by half, then setting to 200% compensates it. In general that could cause distortion, but for that particular case it works.
 
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