I thought this was a sound card problem, so i went and baught a good soundcard (M-Audio Revolution 5.1) but still have the problem:

When I plug my Mic in and speak into it, it is very very silent. I have turned up all input levels to max and still i have to scream into it for anything to register at all.

Does anyone have an idea of what the problem is?

Any help would be greatly appreaciated.

Is the In a preamped one? If it's a Mic In (so with a preamp) there's something wrong or badly set up, if it's a Line In you need a preamp between the mic and the In.

What mic is it? Has it a pad? If so, check it's not on.

I guess I should ask the obvious first. Is it a condenser mic? If so, do you have the phantom power on?

might be a bad mic cord (had the same thing happen) or a bad mic all together... did you check each component?

I've got the same problem of a quiet signal with feedback in the background. Can anyone help me out?

I just checked the website for the Revolution 5.1. You will need a microphone pre-amp to get much of any signal out of your mic before going into your computer. If it helps, Presonus makes a pretty good preamp for under a hundered bucks. I think that ART makes a preamp that sells for around 30 bucks. Microphones don't make much signal (neither do guitars, tape decks, turntables, etc) so you need to boost the signal before going to a recording device. I would almost suggest getting a small mixer to meet all of these needs if you want to stay with the particular sound card that you have chosen. Behringer makes some cheap ones (ok, but not great) & Soundcraft & Mackie make some REALLY good ones for the money (I have a Soundcraft Compact 4 that ran around a hundred bucks & has 2 good mic preamps & a turntable preamp, & a couple of balanced & unbalanced inputs & man...I love this thing). So, you either need another sound card or you need to spend a little more money on a mic pre.

i can relate, somewhat. i have a sm58 into a firebox and with the preamp completely cranked, it still doesn't have the signal i would expect. i tested the mic and chord through a tascam four track and it worked well. infact i could hear the room ambience and passing cars outside, something that didn't come through in the firebox. i do like the firebox but at the level i need from it, it produces some noise that i have to e.q. out on every track. somewhere around 1k.

The Firebox preamps are pretty quiet. Good quality, but quiet. FMR Audio's Really Nice Preamp is a little more expensive than other recommendations here, but is very, very nice. And very, very loud.

I tried using a preamp and the volume goes up but so does the background noise, rediculously. I think my problem is running Mac Os X on a G3, which is why I'd like to downgrade to Mac Os 9.2.

Background noise is surely a mic/preamp issue, not an OS X/G3 issue.