When you record, is supposed to hear your voice in the headphones?!?!?

scdaymon

scdaymon

New member
Hi guys!!!

Hi guys!!! ;)

This is indeed, a simples question: when you are recording your voice, is supposed to realtime ear the voice in your headphones? :confused:
Let me make it clear: I never recorded in a real studio. I’m an amateur musician and trying to be an amateur producer. When you are recording your voice, with the instrumental part playing in your headphones, sometimes when you sing (to the recording track) you don’t get the notion of how it sounds. I use only a earphone, so I can have a better sense of my voice. But I was thinking: maybe, in real studios, the singers also ear their voice when recording… like a Karaoke?

Can someone please advice me in this.

By the way: I have a Alesis io2 Express interface, a Shure sm58, and I use Mixcraft 5.

Ps: Sorry for the bad English… I’m Portuguese! :D
 
Yes, you should be able to hear your voice in the headphones. Each recorder is different but every one makes it possible to hear yourself as you sing or play. Sometimes people like to sing without hearing themself in the headphones.
 
Thanks for your quick answer “grimtraveller”!!!

Well, I have to discover how can I do that with Mixcraft (I mean, even that the voice will sound just clean – i.e. unproduced).
I suppose that my gear allows that.

Again, thank you for your attention…
 
Well, since grimtraveller kindly told me that usually in professional studios, singers real time hear what they sing, I began searching for the solution to do that in Mixcraft 5.
So it is indeed very easy. Allow me to share a tech answer I found in Mixcraft forum:

"Some sound devices include a feature that allows you to hear what you are recording. Many devices (such as USB microphones), though, do not allow you to hear what you are recording. And other times, you may wish to monitor your live performance through Mixcraft's effects - for example, guitar players wishing to play live through Mixcraft's guitar amp simulators. To hear or 'live monitor' a track, click the arm recording selector button followed by clicking Monitor Incoming Audio.

We recommend that you use headphones in order to avoid feedback when recording with a microphone.

One caveat to this is that you must set your sound card to mix with a low latency, otherwise it will sound like an echo chamber and the sound could be delayed by seconds. You can go into the preferences and try ASIO mode, if available, or reduce the buffer size to 4096 or 2048 and reduce the number of buffers to 2 or 3 in Wave mode. The down side to reducing your buffers and buffer size is that you may hear gaps in the audio, depending on your sound card and computer speed.

Hearing Effects In Real Time
If you add effects, you will also hear the effects on a track if monitoring is on. The effects are not recorded and you can change them or remove them later, without affecting the recording."

So this question is solved. I don’t know how you guys do here in the forum: Do you mark solved in the thread, but let the thread to eventually help other users, or just erase it?

Thanks
 
scdaymon said:
So this question is solved. I don’t know how you guys do here in the forum: Do you mark solved in the thread, but let the thread to eventually help other users, or just erase it?

Thanks
Click to expand...

nah...we leave it up so someone else who happens to have questions in this area can see the answer.


oh....also so we can add stuff like this...


ugly.jpg


:D
 
well it depends on you if you want to hear your singing while recording then you can hear through headphones but but some people don't like to hear while recording it depends on you.
 
Yes rabia, I guess that's a matter of choice.
But like I said, sometimes, when you are singing (to the recording track) you don’t get the notion of how it sounds.

The problem, by now, is the latency of my gear. I'm trying to solve this with the Asio driver.

By the way, an advice to all the users that are thinking about buying an Audio Interface: buy one that supports 2.0 USB or firewire, since they usually that don't have latency problems cause the transfer rate is much bigger than interfaces with normal USB.
 
Doesn't your interface have some way for you to monitor the mic signal without it going thru your DAW? Or are you trying to use your DAW for real time fx for the singer while he's tracking?
 
What you mean by monitor the mic signal?! (Jesus, I'm such a newbie :D )
Guess my interface (Alesis io2 express) can't monitor the mic signal! It has the gain knob, but that's just to alter the volume tracking.
And I'm not interested in using the DAW for real time effects (for the singing) while tracking (even though that would be a cool thing to perform live). By now I'm only interest in real time ear what I'm tracking, without any effects. And I guess (from what I read somewhere) that's because of normal USB connection and that low transfer rate that I'm getting a lot of latency [I'm singing, and only 1 second (or less but...) after can I hear myself in the headphones]...
Trying the Asio4all thing...
 
Guys... just to finish the thread, the Asio4all driver makes it work with very low latency. So, all I had to do was to download the Asio driver, install it, and then configure it inside the DAW.
Latency problem solved! :)

But now, I got another problem (Dear Lord… this is really a walk in the jungle :facepalm: !!!):
The recordings sounds with very low volume.

Any suggestions?! :D
Thanks
 
Holy crap - I was going to tell you something like 'you need to install the asio drivers that come with your device' and 'of course you can monitor the direct signal, you just need to go to the alesis control panel' and then I saw this on the website:

ASIO4All - Optional ASIO Driver for Windows [v2.10]
This Alesis audio interface is a plug-and-play device, which means that no additional drivers need to be installed to use it with your computer. If you use ASIO compatible audio software on your Windows PC, this optional ASIO driver can be used to offer additional configuration options such as latency and buffer adjustments.

They don't even have an ASIO driver for this thing, or a control Panel and are relying on the (great) freeware ASIO4ALL driver for basic product functionality! Repeat - It doesn't have an ASIO driver *and* they bundle it with Cubase LE!!!

Anyway - the answer to zero latency monitoring with this device is to use the 'Monitor Mix' knob on the device. Leave it in the middle and mute the monitoring on the vocal channel in cubase while you record.
 
Yes I think you should. I would not recommend using ear buds when singing as it makes your voice sound to you different than what the mic will hear .. but depending on the person and situation this mite help.
 
chuckduffy said:
Anyway - the answer to zero latency monitoring with this device is to use the 'Monitor Mix' knob on the device. Leave it in the middle and mute the monitoring on the vocal channel in cubase while you record.
Click to expand...

Thanks bro, that advice for the "Monitor Mix knob" on the device was really helpful.
About cubase.. yes, that was the DAW that came with Alesis... but, JESUS... you need an Nasa Engineer Degree to work with that software!!! :p
So I trade it for Mixcraft... it's very user friendly, and serves my purposes!

And you are right... it's really a shame that Alesis doesn't have a proprietary and specific driver for this thing!!!
 
Michael Wood said:
I would not recommend using ear buds when singing as it makes your voice sound to you different than what the mic will hear .. but depending on the person and situation this mite help.
Click to expand...

Yeah bro... sometimes it's a mess to real time hear (in such an isolated way) what you're singing to the tape.
I did not yet decided how to record...
 
Some people like to leave one heaphone on and one off, so you can also hear your voice the way you are used to hearing it.
And you can send a mono feed to the phones.
 
LI_Slim said:
First learn how to sing, then learn something about recording. then you can start to talk.
Click to expand...

First of all, I was just kidding man... and I guess that was obviously, if not for what I said, at least for my emoticon!
Second… I could tell you that although I've never recorded, I've been a musician and singer for several years, and I do not admit that you suggest that I need to learn how to sing… because you never heard me singin.
If you're not here to help, leave it to other people who have been able to do that...

Jesus!!!:confused:
 
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