Spectral display shows recording cut off at 4khz

Report · Jun 21, 2024

I just moved over to a new laptop and encountered an issue where my recordings are all cutting off at 4khz. I'm using the exact same mic as I was on my old system (Samson Q2U).

I've checked all the settings across both computers for bit rate, frequency, etc for both the system settings and those in Audition and can find no discrepancies; both laptops are using the exact same version of Audition. Both are using up-to-date versions of Windows, although the new system is using the Home version as opposed to Enterprise on the old one. I'm completely stumped and would love some help.

Report · Jun 21, 2024

Audition looks to be set up correctly, but when I looked on Samson's website it appears that you might need to go into your system settings to get the mic to work the way you want it to. They give you some of the settings you need to look at, but not all. You may have checked all this already, but I need to ask about a few things anyway, before looking any further.

When you go into the control panel and select Sound, you can pick the mic. When you've done that and clicked on the Properties box, go to Advanced, and check the Default Format settings. They should be set to at least 44.1k and 16 bit. If you find that it's set to something like 8k, then that's your problem. Whilst you are there, put checks in the Exclusive mode boxes. Now go to the Enhancements tab and make sure that all the effects are disabled. Hit Okay and see if things improve.

I'm looking at this currently on a W10 machine, but I'm pretty sure it's the same on W11. the principle is certainly the same.

Report · Jun 29, 2024

Thanks so much for looking into this. All those settings are copacetic, and none of them solved the issue. I wound up digging deeper (i.e. another couple of hours of digging through posts) and discovered that it was an incompatibility happening directly within the USB-A port. I solved it by purchasing a USB hub, plugging my USB-A mic into that, and putting it through into USB-C. I don't fully understand why that worked, but it did the trick!