im a total noob, please help:(

[Shelby]

hi
ok here goes, i dont know bugger all about anything and need to know real basic stuff here
how do i use my mixer? i want to record vocals and guitar onto my comp, i know i have an alright soundcard cos i bought it off a friend who used to have it in a studio,
i bought a good mic too, and im using cool edit pro

also how do i use the mixer to get my mic on my amp with guitar?
i have been playing for years but always let the boys in the band handle this stuff, and dont want to ask because i just know ill get taunted for weeks lol
please help if you can
cheers
shelly

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Welcome to the BBS.

A few questions for you:

Do you know what soundcard it is?

Does it have built in mic preamps?

How many tracks are you wanting to record simultaneously?

What mixer do you have?

Does it have direct outs?

Do you intend to use condesnor mics?

Does the mixer have phantom power?

If your soundcard has mic pres built in you probably don't need the mixer, if not then you'll really only be using the mixer for the mic preamps.

You're probably better off doing all of your mixing 'in the box'. It's possible to send it all back out to a mixer but it's fairly complicated and it's only really worthwhile if you have a lot of good quality hardware you want to use.

How you get your sound from the mixer (assuming you need to use it) to the comp depends on the mixer.

[Shelby]

hey thanks for answering
im not sure what soundcard it is, but we have done recordings on here before, but ive never been in with the techy side

build in preamps? lol

only want to record about 5 tracks, acoustic guitars and vocals

i bought a eurorack ub1202

i hope this info is helpful, sorry i dont know alot about this
cheers
shelly

[bcains]

Behringer UB1202 info
*4 mic inputs w/ phantom power
*12 line inputs
*Main mix outputs plus separate control room, headphones and stereo tape outputs.
*Tape inputs assignable to main mix or control room/phones outputs.

I'll let Kev run you through it

This also may help you, or you might just not bother reading it. whatever

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Assuming your card only has two inputs you’re pretty much restricted to recording live or relying on overdubs. Maybe that was your intention anyway? To record a live performance you’d simply hook everything up to the mixer (you'll be restricted to 4 mics) and go from the tape outs of the mixer to the inputs of the soundcard. This would give you one stereo track into the computer so obviously you wouldn’t be able to adjust individual levels, pan, eq etc individual elements, you'd have to get that right before hitting record. Of course overdubs would give you a separate track for each element and you’d be able to mixdown after the event which is preferable to mixing ‘on the fly’.

If you wanted to record just two tracks simultaneously you could probably use channels 1 and 2 on the mixer and pan them hard left and right. You would then have two separate mono tracks, that’s the way it works on most of those little mixers anyway although I haven’t used the behringer.

Yeah that's a good article bcains posted, as you'll see if you read it it's a shame your mixer doesn't have track inserts as there's a good trick which enables you to use thenm as direct outputs.

However if you only have a 2 input card that's by the by.

Good luck with it.

[Shelby]

thanks guys, very helpful, ill check it all out