Audacity is doing something weird
I had been using my desktop without having the proper drivers for the sound card installed for about a year not. The mic I use with it isn't a studio mic. It's a stage mic that doesn't pick up much if I go more than 3 inches away from it and, without the sound card drivers, I had to amplify a lot.
I installed the proper drivers and I no longer have to amplify, but there's something weird happening in Audacity. It looks like icicles.
Later Edit: I poked around in the settings some more and I think I figured it out.
I reset everything to default settings and my recording looks like this:
What you see above is a combination of DC Offset correction and a microphone boost of +30dB
When I turn on the microphone boost setting, the waveform just moves higher (this is at +20dB, it centers around 0.3 at +30dB)
A closeup of what it looks like with both DC Offset Correction and Microphone Boost turned on in the sound card settings
The recording was getting clipped on the top side because of that, I think. There doesn't seem to be a problem if I keep just the DC Offset Correction turned on (maybe a +10dB Microphone Boost, at most) and then amplify in Audacity when I'm done.
I installed the proper drivers and I no longer have to amplify, but there's something weird happening in Audacity. It looks like icicles.
Later Edit: I poked around in the settings some more and I think I figured it out.
I reset everything to default settings and my recording looks like this:
What you see above is a combination of DC Offset correction and a microphone boost of +30dB
When I turn on the microphone boost setting, the waveform just moves higher (this is at +20dB, it centers around 0.3 at +30dB)
A closeup of what it looks like with both DC Offset Correction and Microphone Boost turned on in the sound card settings
The recording was getting clipped on the top side because of that, I think. There doesn't seem to be a problem if I keep just the DC Offset Correction turned on (maybe a +10dB Microphone Boost, at most) and then amplify in Audacity when I'm done.