audio/mic recording problems

[zoominillicit]

First it must be noted that I have a laughable amount of experience with audio production and software. I have spent about a month familiarizing myself with ableton live 8. I have installed the program on a laptop. I am using an at2020 audio technica usb compressor mic. Despite my best efforts to get a clear recording I get a layer of static or background noise typical of low quality phone or built in computer mics. After playing around I found that ableton is using the built in computer microphone. even turning setting the at mic as default recording ddevice(disabling all others) ableton still records through the computer mic with or without the other microphone helping out. How can I stop this?

[3dot...]

maybe try and lower the volume of the mic in the OS preferences

[zoominillicit]

I have tried many different forms of volume control but my problem seems to be that ableton is always using the computers built in mic to record even though I have disabled all but the at mic in the control panel. It will record like this even after I unplug the mic.

[3dot...]

then choose the correct one directly in lives' preferences...

[zoominillicit]

I do apologize for the incredibly noobish questions and also grateful for your response. I was aware of the ableton audio preferences menu, and up until I installed asio4all I was unable to get the mic to record without getting too much latency. As soon as it was installed, the latency was gone but the microphone does not appear in the drop down menu. I've also had a hunch I need a soundcard of some kind. But as I said im very new to this.

[3dot...]

hmm..

maybe the asio4all settings need to be adjusted..
or maybe asio4all doesn't work well with this specific device..
you need to experiment a bit to figure it out..

maybe try to find forum posts from the web with other people with this specific mic..
experiencing the same problem..
an audio technica forum would be my first stop..