Thanks guys! I had hoped to have the second episode done for today, but the new microphone I bought is, it turns out, absolute shit. It's so quiet that even with Minecraft sound at 5% you can't hear a word I'm saying, and if I use the Windows mic boost to make it louder, it gets super noisy and crackly. I have to throw out the episode I filmed, revert to my last save (fortunately I'm backing up after each episode) and do it again with a new mic... Hopefully I'l get to it today. I can only upload episodes at work since my internet at home is so slow (would take 15 hours per episode - at work it takes 10 minutes), so if I don't get it uploaded tomorrow, it'll have to wait until next Tuesday. Maybe I'll try to do a few in advance over the weekend and schedule them to release over a week or so, if I can find the time.
If anyone has experience with recording sound on the computer without spending gobs of money, please get in touch. The microphone I bought (
Trust Starzz) had good reviews, but no matter how I fiddled with the settings I couldn't get it to sound good (or loud enough) on my machine.
Actually, a thought occurs just now as I am writing this: When I was recording, I didn't use my headphones (I have tinnitus so I thought I'd take the opportunity to protect my ears) but I turned my speakers down low so the mic wouldn't pick up the game sound. Maybe I need to turn down the system volume? Maybe the reason the game was so loud in comparison is because OBS respects the system volume, and if I turn it down, maybe I can get this to work... I need to do some science on this after work today. Again, if anyone knows more about computer sound than me (probably just about everyone), please make yourself known! I've only ever recorded with a headset before, so the microphone is a new thing for me.
EDIT: Other info that might be useful: the reason I had to turn the mic boost off is it creates a LOT of hiss and white noise. It's also really very quiet and I have to have my mouth right next to it for it to hear me. If I'm more than a few cm/about an in away from the mic, the sound quality and volume drop off drastically. I tried using the Windows white noise remover setting but it messed up the sound of my voice so I had to turn it back off. My headset creating a lot of static and hiss is the main reason I replaced it with this new mic, so if I can't at least reduce that somehow, this thing is not really worth the money. But on the other hand, I do not have gobs of cash sitting around for a really high-quality mic... I need to find the best I can for cheap. : /
There's also the rattling issue. When I move the mic around, I can hear something rattling inside. It's so cheap, I wonder if that's just part of the design - but of course, the mic does pick up that sound. Maybe I'll see if I can exchange it and see if the new one is any better. It's just a hassle to do this since they don't speak English at the electronics place and I always feel I've gotten ripped off slightly because my Czech isn't so great and they find unreasonable excuses to charge me extra money.