FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Guitar Part Diagram

Question:
Bought 2 XLR balanced leads, a new XLR Dynamic mic and some connectors etc over the weekend and now everything works beautifully at long last!!!! I have the main out now plugged into the line-in of the soundcard as it's supposed to be, and it is now very loud and working well. Just a few more questions, and I think I'm set to start some serious singing and guitar recording How close should one be normaly to the mic itself? Because with the trim on the mic channels turned more or less all the way up, I can sit way back from the mic and still record easily (approx 1-1.5 feet away). Is this the wrong thing to do? Should I turn the trim and other levels down much lower, and just get to within 1-3 inches from the mic instead? I have found that if I record in wavelab 5a and then play my recording back, with or without adding any reverb etc, it sounds great. However, if I save it as a wave/mp3 etc and play it in e.g. Windows Media Player 10, it sounds as if it's way too bassy on times and actually causes some speaker vibration. Any idea what I am doing to cause this? Maybe too much of the trim etc I mentioned on the mic(s)? Media player is just set as standard, so it shouldn't be that. When I send my songs to friends, I don't want their speakers vibing all the time lol. Would kinda ruin the whole idea. I now have 2 good quality XLR connected mic's. One is the Sennheiser e818 S2 as mentioned in my other thread and the new one is an XLR connected Dynamic mic which is also very good quality. Now they are connected properly to the mixer, one mic alone easily picks up both my guitar and voice. (I sit at my desk to record). Should I mic the vocals and guitar with a mic each, or just use one mic for both? Also, if you suggest 2 mics, do I just have to experiment with each channels trim and levels until I get no crossover from vocals and guitar etc? One final question lol. How do you connect the output of the soundcard to go through the mixer, and then to your speakers. I know I can connect with a 3.5mm jack on the card to twin phono leads on the tape in/out of the mixer, but do you then connect the speakers directly to the mixer? and if so, how? There are two main outs on the mixer so do I plug the speakers in there? There are also control room outs. Do they plug in there maybe? I have no idea. Also, my speakers end in a 3.5mm stereo jack. The outs on the mixer are seperate left / right channel 6.3mm ports. Is there a way to connect those together? Anyway, I guess thats enough for now before I bore everyone lol. I hope I have been clear enough with my questions. Maybe a few of you who do this all the time can help me

Answer:
The main goal of any recording is to keep the noise down while the good part of the signal up. The mic should come with documentation that recommends an ideal distance (it will vary with mics). If you're too close, you'll get pronounced pops and hisses. If you're too far away (with higher mic gain), you'll get other background noise (like computer fans, squeaky chairs, cat meows, kids crying and dogs barking etc.). Additionally, you'll get preamplifier noise from the the trim being too high etc. (listen carefully to the recording and you'll hear increased hiss etc I don't know wavelab or the soundcard you are using well, but I'll bet that the SB 5.1 soundcard sports 24-32 bit samples. But when you save the recording as a WAV file, you might have selected (or defaulted to 16-bit samples). This will discard some of the quality. MP3s are even worse, because they use lossy compression. There is some major transformation happening to compress the size of the file down. Some weird things happen in some MP3s too and this one I find really amusing: sometimes you can hear an event coming, kind of like the old records where you could sometimes faintly hear the groove beside the one currently playing. It is a known problem and they use a lot of math to explain it -- I can only smile at it. MP3s are good enough for MP3 player use, but you really want to use WAV files or some other lossless format to burn a CD from or as a permanent record. As to your frequency response, I can only assume that your media players are invoking perhaps some surround sound enhancements etc. that wavelab is not. Check your Media player options etc. Also check your sound card advanced properties. Choice of speaker modelling is also important (have you got it modelling for laptop speakers when they are something else? Check the EQ parameters on your mixer. It could partially be the way you have recorded it. If you are trying to record it all in one go, you'll need to do a lot of experimenting, I think. For the reasons you've already discovered. Another possibility is to do multi-tracked recording, where you record say the guitar part once, and the vocals on a 2nd take. I don't know about wavelab, so I am not sure that is an option. I configured my setup to play from the line outs on the PC to the tape inputs on the mixer. I use the mixer outputs for the PC line level inputs for recording (as you are presumably doing). I use the control room outputs to send the signal from the mixer to the stereo (at the flip of a switch, I can send mixer output or PC outpus to the stereo & earphone jack). Your mixer probably came with a block diagram. That is what you'll want to study to understand what controls affect what outputs. Photocopy/print a copy of that page, and use a hilighter to show the path from beginning to end. You'll want to do this because there was (in my case) one control that I have to back all the way off to make this work (I think it was Aux2 to Aux1). Your mixer is different, so you may have to research it some. Backing this off prevented the input from mixing with the outputs going to the control room. I ended up buying some cables, and customizing a couple of others with a solding iron (to avoid additional adapters). I hate adapters because this adds to the number of connections, where most of the trouble starts. But before you do that, study your mixer block diagram before you make your cable/connector investment(s). You'll need a stereo or PA amp, unless you have a powered mixer (I assume it is not). Alternatively, if you are happy to use your computer speakers (not always of the best quality) they already include internal amplifiers, accepting a line level signal (control room out is line level). If you find that the diagram is too much for you, email me the diagram (PDF manual or link to one) and I'll gladly look at it for you [e/mai/l#to ve3wwg/A/T/cogeco.ca]. Does you mixer include an earphone jack? If it does, it can be used to test what your control room outputs are getting (at least on my Alto AMX140). I expect most mixers are the similar in that department.