Thank you very much for your help and instructions. I'm having input volume problems, and have tried to address these in a few ways, but I'm woefully ignorant about this stuff. I'll explain what I've done. I'm hoping you might have some more advice.
1. I applied noise reduction in audacity to my test recording, and seemed to have success.
2. I had already amplified my test recording in audacity, even before you listened. I tried amplifying it again, attempting to make sure my highest peak did not go higher than recommended.
3. I downloaded Checker, and it told me the file volume was out of range, but it did not tell me if the volume was too low or too high. (I kind of thought it would tell me if the problem was one or the other....)
4. I decided to start over, and borrowed a Blue Snowball desk top mic (plugs into USB), instead of using my Logitech headset. I hooked up the snowball, adjusted the sound settings and so forth, and tested it.
5. I made a new 1 Minute Recording. My volume profile, or whatever you call it, still doesn't look right in audacity. The volume is still too low.
6. I downloaded MP3Gain, as recommended by Checker. First I applied noise reduction to my new recording, using audacity. Then I used Gain to raise the volume level (which was in the 70s) to around 89. It worked, but
now I hear distortion in the new recording, presumably because it had originally been so quiet. (See link below.)
I have a new Lenovo ideapad and am running Windows 10. Since both mics (headset and snowball) seem to be recording at very low volume (even though I've adjusted mic volume slider in settings) I'm not sure what else to do.
https://librivox.org/uploads/tests/test_merrybaker.mp3
Thank you for your patience and any additional feedback you might share!!!
