In February I trained 8 teams to use HearThis and then sent them off to find a quite place and begin recording Luke 1-5. As I checked on teams many were getting quite a bit of “noise” in the recording. They were all using Logitech Headsets and HP computers running Windows 10. I have experienced the same problem with recording using my Logitech H390 headset. I thought the headset was bad because of the noise, but in playing around I found that it was somewhat better or worse depending on which USB port I used. (The noise seems to be computer noise coming not from mic but from the connection – maybe?). One team discovered that the noise went away when they unplugged their computer and ran it on batteries. But I could not perceive noise coming from the power cable. Onyone else experienced this kind of thing?
Try disabling your built-in laptop mic. This has solved some other (unrelated?) problems for some people.
Thanks, Tom. I’ll try that personally and try it next time with our translation teams (in June). I just took notice of this issue while reading the “becomes more sluggish with USB headset” thread.
Hi, Ron. Yes we have ran into this ‘buzz’ or ‘hum’ noise before as well. What we found to work was to run on battery power. The AC power coming into the laptop cause noise with the USB recording headset. Another option to try, would be to use a stereo male plug as an input for the microphone, not USB. Overall, we have found it best to run on battery. You can charge the battery over breaks, lunch, etc. when you are not recording.
Yes, in Jan 2017, we first tried Hear This recordings with Logitech USB Headset H540 and the noise was terrible. I returned them promptly and switched to Sennheiser PC8 USB headsets and the performance has been great. It is consistently quiet and clear. I don’t understand it, but I’m grateful for the switch. I don’t think the computer had anything to do with the problem.
Thanks, Tyler. This confirms what one of our translation teams said – I think they just stumbled onto this by accident. I doubted that running on battery or AC should make a difference, but apparently so. And I heard that from yet one more person just this morning.
Thanks, Dale. Ok, one more thing to factor in. Your Logitech H540 would be a small step up from my H390’s. And I see that the Sennheiser is in the same price range as those two. So I’ll make a note that for any headsets we need to replace, we should try the Sennheiser.