So for 6 months now I have been using the "Lexicon Alpha" to record my voice with a Sennheiser Dynamic Mic. The sound has always been very clear and it gives high quality audio.
Yesterday, while I was on teamspeak, I opened Garageband and instantly the people on teamspeak were asking "What are you doing? Your voice is coming across really distorted!". And they were right, it was really really distorted, to the point you couldn't here what I was saying:
Example: http://youtu.be/jlmHpHNh_Tc
So what did I do?
At first I thought it was either my Mic or my XLR-Leads. I swapped out my XLR-XLR lead for a XLR-Jack lead and plugged that into the Lexicon-Alpha. Something really weird happened... The voice I was recording sounded high pitched - like a chipmunk.
Example: http://youtu.be/Fr6Msub8IMc
Since the problem hadn't been fixed I tried swapping my mic (hoping it wasn't my lexicon-alpha) but nothing changed.
I decided to try the lexicon-alpha in my laptop instead of in my Mac-Pro and boom it fixed the issue! So I knew it had something to do with my Mac-Pro (which I was really dreading).
So I had a 1 hour long conversation with the support, where we went through lots of different resets, restarting the computer and holding cmd-r, cmd-shift-r, and all the rest of it but even after that hour the problem still hadn't been resolved. I was told there were only 3 more things that could be done:
1. Time machine backup
2. OS reinstall
3. Genius bar appointment.
I don't keep a time machine backup so I spent 8 hours after the support call reinstalling the OS but to no avail.
My dad suggested trying another USB port and boom - the problem was fixed. I proceeded to try all the other USB ports and it was only 1 of them that wasn't working.
Before I rang apple support I had sent a message to Lexicon about the problem. I checked my email and I had received a message from them telling me to go into the Audio-Midi setup and toggle between the 16-Bit sound and 24-Bit sound.
On 24-Bit sound the mic was working fine.
On 16-Bit sound the mic was all distorted again!
So my guess is garageband automatically switched that port to 16-Bit sound when I opened it for the very first time, in an attempt to try and set up the mic I assume. I'd guess this is because GarageBand default values are 44kHz, 16-bit, stereo.
But by trying to be helpful it was the opposite making my voice sound like a chipmunk... xD
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TL;DR
I had a problem with my Lexicon-Alpha (it had been working for a year before this point) after opening Garageband for the very first time. The microphone sounded super distorted and if I avoided the Lexicon-Alpha's pre-amp it made my voice sound like a Chipmunk.
The problem was that garageband set the audio of that port from 44.1kHz 24-bit to 44.1kHz 16-bit (because it only accepts 16-bit audio).
To fix the issue I just opened the Application "Audio MIDI Setup" which can be found via the search function. In this application I selected "Lexicon Alpha In/Out" and changed the Format from 44100.0 Hz 2ch-16bit Integer to 44100.0 Hz 2ch-24bit Integer.
I hope this helps some other poor soul in the future!
p.s. I'm not entirely sure if this was the right forum for this post, if not if you could move this post that would be great!
Yesterday, while I was on teamspeak, I opened Garageband and instantly the people on teamspeak were asking "What are you doing? Your voice is coming across really distorted!". And they were right, it was really really distorted, to the point you couldn't here what I was saying:
Example: http://youtu.be/jlmHpHNh_Tc
So what did I do?
At first I thought it was either my Mic or my XLR-Leads. I swapped out my XLR-XLR lead for a XLR-Jack lead and plugged that into the Lexicon-Alpha. Something really weird happened... The voice I was recording sounded high pitched - like a chipmunk.
Example: http://youtu.be/Fr6Msub8IMc
Since the problem hadn't been fixed I tried swapping my mic (hoping it wasn't my lexicon-alpha) but nothing changed.
I decided to try the lexicon-alpha in my laptop instead of in my Mac-Pro and boom it fixed the issue! So I knew it had something to do with my Mac-Pro (which I was really dreading).
So I had a 1 hour long conversation with the support, where we went through lots of different resets, restarting the computer and holding cmd-r, cmd-shift-r, and all the rest of it but even after that hour the problem still hadn't been resolved. I was told there were only 3 more things that could be done:
1. Time machine backup
2. OS reinstall
3. Genius bar appointment.
I don't keep a time machine backup so I spent 8 hours after the support call reinstalling the OS but to no avail.
My dad suggested trying another USB port and boom - the problem was fixed. I proceeded to try all the other USB ports and it was only 1 of them that wasn't working.
Before I rang apple support I had sent a message to Lexicon about the problem. I checked my email and I had received a message from them telling me to go into the Audio-Midi setup and toggle between the 16-Bit sound and 24-Bit sound.
On 24-Bit sound the mic was working fine.
On 16-Bit sound the mic was all distorted again!
So my guess is garageband automatically switched that port to 16-Bit sound when I opened it for the very first time, in an attempt to try and set up the mic I assume. I'd guess this is because GarageBand default values are 44kHz, 16-bit, stereo.
But by trying to be helpful it was the opposite making my voice sound like a chipmunk... xD
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TL;DR
I had a problem with my Lexicon-Alpha (it had been working for a year before this point) after opening Garageband for the very first time. The microphone sounded super distorted and if I avoided the Lexicon-Alpha's pre-amp it made my voice sound like a Chipmunk.
The problem was that garageband set the audio of that port from 44.1kHz 24-bit to 44.1kHz 16-bit (because it only accepts 16-bit audio).
To fix the issue I just opened the Application "Audio MIDI Setup" which can be found via the search function. In this application I selected "Lexicon Alpha In/Out" and changed the Format from 44100.0 Hz 2ch-16bit Integer to 44100.0 Hz 2ch-24bit Integer.
I hope this helps some other poor soul in the future!
p.s. I'm not entirely sure if this was the right forum for this post, if not if you could move this post that would be great!