Hello!
I received my microphone certified refurbished from Amazon about a month ago. At the moment, I am making a recording of a Yamaha grand piano. Based off of videos/comments on the internet, I believe my current setup does not produce a quality of audio that the microphone should probably be capable of.
Right off the bat, I need to mention that I am recording in Mono (one microphone), so this may affect quality.
I asked a friend with prior audio experience to describe the issue. After listening through my ATH-M50X headphones, he notes that the recording sounds muffled and low fidelity, the piano's sound is missing its brilliance/shimmer, and there there is a lack of overtones; all combined, it sounds as if there were a blanket in front of the mic. He mentioned that recording in stereo would most definitely improve the sound, but the microphone should probably not be producing that sound. I'm unable to record in stereo for now (budget) but I plan to in the future. He asked if the mic came with any EQ software, or any way to adjust it. He also listened through the live headphone jack monitor and noted that the mic is extremely sensitive, so he suspects it could be some sort of driver issue. I uninstalled and reinstalled the Windows USB Mic Driver just to be sure.
I record using Audacity, and have made sure that all recording settings match. (Windows properties and Audacity are both set to 48000hz, 2 channel, 16 bit.) I also followed the official Audio-Technica guide to microphone placement, and have optimized my placement based off of what it instructs.
Is there anything I'm missing that would improve audio quality?
Thanks!