PC recording - recommendation for small mixer (no USB)

[ChristopherBell]

Very puzzling situation. Bought a XENYX 802 mixer - and there's NO way to divert things to ANY of the outputs without it altering what I hear when I'm recording.

I have a very simple setup.... Machines with soundcards - Line inputs and Line outputs. I only record guitar tracks, and rarely a vocal line. So, I just need something that will playback audio from the PC, and let me record one track at a time.

This Behringer.... It has buttons that LOOK like they control routing, but, they just turn things on or off in the headphones.... How useless is that?

So... to recap - In the headphone mix - I want to HEAR what I'm playing to along with what I'm playing - but I ONLY want what I'm playing to go OUT of the mixer back into the PC.

Seems simple enough... but, apparantly not.

Who's got a small mixer that can do that??

Thanks.

 

[PDP]

These old Tascam mixers have a lot of ins/outs. I'm not entirely clear on what your needing to do, but this mixer is set up like the old school mixer(s) with a few different busses. You might have to add a headphone amp.

Vintage Tascam M 208 8 Channel Professional Audio Mixer | eBay

Something like this might work too, (I have one it works great for routing all over a small studio)

Behringer Minimon MON800 | Sweetwater.com

Good Luck

 

[ChristopherBell]

It's a simple requirement - but seems complex to solve I'm recording with a laptop. I want to hear the music playing from the laptop as I record my guitar. However the mixer I purchased spits EVERYTHING out of the outputs. So, as I record a guitar track - the backing track goes BACK onto the recording. Make sense? That's a great price on that thing... I'll check it out! Thanks.

 

[PDP]

Ahh ok you need to isolate your guitar/input signal from the output mix. Are you sure you cant do that by panning all the mix to one side and the guitar input to the other, or using the send from one channel for the guitar. You'd only have a mono monitor mix, but it might work. Otherwise, get a preamp for your guitar and use the Xenyx for monitoring. Or get a headphone amp/monitor amp and use the Xenyx as your guitar preamp. Most home set-ups have the pre-amp(input section) separate from the monitoring (output section) unless you have an external Audio Interface which does it for you.

 

[Chili]

I'm pretty sure that little mixer you got isn't going to do what you want it to do. It's not designed for it. If you can, return it to the store and buy an audio interface.

 

[mjbphotos]

+++1 What Chili said ^^^^

Read this thread about mixers and recording.

 

[Bobbsy]

+2

You don't need a mixer and, unless you spend somewhat more money than you likely want to, you won't get the routing options you want.

A basic two channel audio interface (there are tons to choose from) with direct hardware monitoring will do exactly what you want.

...and you'll probably notice the improved quality over a cheap mixer feeding a cheaper built in sound card.