Recording audio can't get rid of fuz in background please help

Question

so i have had my macpro for about 3 months i have been making hiphop songs flat out. my vocals have always been crystal clear im just using the inbuilt mic but yesterday i got a usb plug for my guitar i stuffed around playing guitar on gb for a few hours than i went back to finish one of my rap songs now wen i went to rcord my vocals there is like a fuz in the background it sounds so bad i cant even use it i have tried changing recording levels but it just wont go back to the quality it was before. i am really stuck and need an answer has anyone else had this problem i cant do anything until its sorted. thanks guys

Answer 1

jaronfromscarborough wrote:
its still doesnt make sence y its picking up more background noise s as well as the fuz. and y wasnt the fan working earlyer it just seems like it happened after running my guitar through garageband.
the fan is designed to ramp up and down based on how hot the computer is running. so if you just used the computer for work that ramped up the CPU, it would be running hotter and the fan would kick in. once the computer cools off, it throttles down.
jaronfromscarborough wrote:
im just a bit worried i dont want to go out and spend the money on new equipment for it not to work. is this problem common? thanks for your help so far mattimattmatt
understood! it's understandably frustrating that you buy a computer only to learn you have to buy MORE STUFF! just to do what you bought the computer for. the thing is, the built in microphone isn't really designed for music. it's like a phone microphone - useful for its tasks, but not something you'd expect to get a good recording through.
while it's frustrating to encounter the need to buy more stuff, on the other hand, when you realize you have a studio in your computer more sophisticated in some ways than what the Beatles were using, and all you have to buy is a microphone and maybe an interface... overall, it's still not a bad deal!
if all you need is a better microphone, you could buy a USB mic which isn't much and plugs directly into the USB port of the computer:
http://www.sweetwater.com/c981--USB_Microphones
here are some audio interfaces (you'd need to buy a mic separately, but you'd plug the mic and the guitar into the interface to get the sound into the computer, with the result that both would record in higher quality):
http://www.sweetwater.com/c695--USB_Audio_Interfaces/popular
(note that if you bought an interface, you would NOT buy a USB mic, since the interface would have the USB (or firewire) connection to the computer. you'd buy a standard mic, plug it into the interface, and plug the interface into the computer).
here's a new-ish combo USB mic, guitar interface that's pretty good:
http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/one.php
Also, please understand, while what I'm saying about the fan kicking in when you run the computer, and the value of using an external microphone and/or interface is true, since I'm not actually where you are, checking out your computer setup, there's no way for me to tell 100% what's going on. if you are happy with what you were doing, and suddenly started getting distortion, there's always the remote possibility that it's something else. what i'm suggesting is only the likely culprit from having encountered this before!
Finally, to understand how computer-based recording works, while the computer is the heart of your studio, and a contemporary computer has a lot of components stuffed into it out of the gate, for professional results, it's really just the start! A pro computer-based studio can use interfaces, microphones, and other outboard gear that can quickly run into the thousands of dollars, and then add some more zeroes!
good luck!