Somebody Help Me Please Ahhhh!!!

[gjukonline]

This is my first thread and i specificly registered to this site to post it. i NEED help before i do something stupid, like murder my equipment..
LOL

PLEASE READ IT ALL..I KNOW IT's LONG BUT I WANTED TO GET IT ALL IN

Basically heres my situation.
I'm 16. Not exactly rich, yet earning around £100 a week at the moment.
I've rescently got into recording urban songs. E.g recording the vocals over an instrumental. I decided to do it properly and Bought a Behringer B2Pro Condensor Mic to start off with.


I then purchased a Behringer Xenyx 802 Mixer to supply phantom power and offer me room to expand my equipment later on if needed.

After purchasing this i realised i couldn't just rig it to my soundcard (creative soundblaster audigy 7.1) and away to go, i had to buy leads to do so.

(All i wanted to do was record vocals into a DAW and listen to vocals live along with the instrumental through the same headphones. NOT too much to ask)

After some research i decided to purchase the following cables:
Hosa - Dual cable, 1/4 Phone to RCA, 3m
Hosa - Stereo 3.5mm (M) - two RCA, 10ft
(also an adapter but that doesn't make much difference)


RIGHT..
i Plugged the mic (XLR) to channel one..

Then the two 1/4 Phone from "Main Out (L&R)" to the soundcard line in.
(Meaning every input on the mixer gets sent to soundcard? just mic in my case)

Then i connected the other lead from the soundcard output to the mixers tape input.
(Meaning i could monitor the instrumental from the DAW aswel as the vocals from the mixer?)

This However didn't go to plan.
(Just as i thought after 9 weeks of waiting for deliveries that were out of stock ETC i was ready to finally record)...
what i get now is another problem.

The main out to soundcard does it's job. there is a level in the DAW when i record..BUT i can't go anywhere near close to the mic without the recording in the DAW distorting..and yes i've tried more than one DAW
I have no idea what causes that because when i'm just using

Mic > Mixer > Headphones, the audio sounds crisp and perfect.

And the other problem i have is i can't listen to both the instrumental and the vocals im recording at one go when recording through the headphones in the mixer..

headphones through the mixer when recording with instrumental only gives me the vocals

to hear the instrumental, i have to plug the headphones directly to the soundcard..but then i cant hear the vocals..

I'm just so frustrated with these two issues I have encountered on the last step of my set-up..

Falling at the last hurdle hurts so bad

Someone please help / suggest what i'm doing wrong / suggest what to do / what to buy. i dont care how much money i'm willing to give my left arm to get this working...

Sorry the thread is long winded but i wanted to get everything in there thats all..

Thanks People MUCH appreciated

[dualflip]

I would guess that the main problem is that you are recording to your daw using the 1/4 phone output, try using a send or aux to send the signal into your DAW. The other issue about monitoring, well i would try to return the soundcard to a channel in the DAW and monitor that and not what you are sending to the daw, meaning, send the vocals through the aux and mute the channel or lower the fader(just be sure that the aux are on pre), now beware that this signal returning from your daw to a channel must not be routed to the same bus of the vocal send, this will create a huge feedback.

Hope this helps

[pandamonk]

Originally Posted by gjukonline

This is my first thread and i specificly registered to this site to post it. i NEED help before i do something stupid, like murder my equipment..
LOL

PLEASE READ IT ALL..I KNOW IT's LONG BUT I WANTED TO GET IT ALL IN

Basically heres my situation.
I'm 16. Not exactly rich, yet earning around £100 a week at the moment.
I've rescently got into recording urban songs. E.g recording the vocals over an instrumental. I decided to do it properly and Bought a Behringer B2Pro Condensor Mic to start off with.


I then purchased a Behringer Xenyx 802 Mixer to supply phantom power and offer me room to expand my equipment later on if needed.

After purchasing this i realised i couldn't just rig it to my soundcard (creative soundblaster audigy 7.1) and away to go, i had to buy leads to do so.

(All i wanted to do was record vocals into a DAW and listen to vocals live along with the instrumental through the same headphones. NOT too much to ask)

After some research i decided to purchase the following cables:
Hosa - Dual cable, 1/4 Phone to RCA, 3m
Hosa - Stereo 3.5mm (M) - two RCA, 10ft
(also an adapter but that doesn't make much difference)


RIGHT..
i Plugged the mic (XLR) to channel one..

Then the two 1/4 Phone from "Main Out (L&R)" to the soundcard line in.
(Meaning every input on the mixer gets sent to soundcard? just mic in my case)

Then i connected the other lead from the soundcard output to the mixers tape input.
(Meaning i could monitor the instrumental from the DAW aswel as the vocals from the mixer?)

This However didn't go to plan.
(Just as i thought after 9 weeks of waiting for deliveries that were out of stock ETC i was ready to finally record)...
what i get now is another problem.

The main out to soundcard does it's job. there is a level in the DAW when i record..BUT i can't go anywhere near close to the mic without the recording in the DAW distorting..and yes i've tried more than one DAW
I have no idea what causes that because when i'm just using

Mic > Mixer > Headphones, the audio sounds crisp and perfect.

And the other problem i have is i can't listen to both the instrumental and the vocals im recording at one go when recording through the headphones in the mixer..

headphones through the mixer when recording with instrumental only gives me the vocals

to hear the instrumental, i have to plug the headphones directly to the soundcard..but then i cant hear the vocals..

I'm just so frustrated with these two issues I have encountered on the last step of my set-up..

Falling at the last hurdle hurts so bad

Someone please help / suggest what i'm doing wrong / suggest what to do / what to buy. i dont care how much money i'm willing to give my left arm to get this working...

Sorry the thread is long winded but i wanted to get everything in there thats all..

Thanks People MUCH appreciated

Right, the distortion might be that you have everything too loud on the mixer or on the pc. Make sure it's not clipping, going into the red, on the pc. If it's not, then it might be that the volume is too much on the mixer, and then quiet on the pc.

Set your fader on the channel to 0 and then(while singing the loudest you will into the mic) bring up the gain knob until you are just in the orange(on mixer LEDs) at the loudest parts, then in the pc setup the inputting singal(while still singing loudest you will) so that it goes no louder than orange. You can always increase volume a little later on, but you do want to get the highest volume possible without clipping in recording.

If you want to monitor both while recording, depending on software, you need to set it up so you can monitor the input, then you can listen from the soundcard. In cubase, protools etc there should be a button next to the record enable button, which should allow you to hear it. Be aware to switch it off when listening back though, otherwise you won't hear anything.

[Ethan Winer]

This may help too:

Using a Mixer with a DAW

--Ethan

[gjukonline]

Originally Posted by dualflip

I would guess that the main problem is that you are recording to your daw using the 1/4 phone output, try using a send or aux to send the signal into your DAW. The other issue about monitoring, well i would try to return the soundcard to a channel in the DAW and monitor that and not what you are sending to the daw, meaning, send the vocals through the aux and mute the channel or lower the fader(just be sure that the aux are on pre), now beware that this signal returning from your daw to a channel must not be routed to the same bus of the vocal send, this will create a huge feedback.

Hope this helps

Thank you for your input on my problem.
It's appreciated a lot.

try using a send or aux to send the signal into your DAW.

I only have a "stereo AUX return" (L&R) and an "FX Send" (Just one jack)
Along with my Ctrl room & main out. Which one do you mean sorry?
And shall i use a different cable or is it just that i was using it in the wrong jacks?

i would try to return the soundcard to a channel in the DAW and monitor that and not what you are sending to the daw, meaning, send the vocals through the aux and mute the channel or lower the fader(just be sure that the aux are on pre), now beware that this signal returning from your daw to a channel must not be routed to the same bus of the vocal send, this will create a huge feedback.

Sorry to be a pain but i'm only new to all this kind of stuff and i don't quite understand what you mean when you say "return the soundcard to a channel in the DAW"..roughly how would i do that?
and when you say "mute the channel or lower the fader" do you mean turn the channel right down on the mixer?

I do however understand the last part about not using the same channel

Sorry for being such a newb lol
Hope You Have Patience
Thanks again

[gjukonline]

This may help too

Thanks for your guide Ethan..
I thought i was in luck with it until i realised i don't have any "inserts" on the back of my "Behringer xenyx802"

what the guide says is just what i want though to record one stereo track at a time..and overdub after...it's all i need not asking for much but still i can always find some way of doing it wrong LOL

[gjukonline]

Originally Posted by pandamonk

Right, the distortion might be that you have everything too loud on the mixer or on the pc. Make sure it's not clipping, going into the red, on the pc. If it's not, then it might be that the volume is too much on the mixer, and then quiet on the pc.

Set your fader on the channel to 0 and then(while singing the loudest you will into the mic) bring up the gain knob until you are just in the orange(on mixer LEDs) at the loudest parts, then in the pc setup the inputting singal(while still singing loudest you will) so that it goes no louder than orange. You can always increase volume a little later on, but you do want to get the highest volume possible without clipping in recording.

If you want to monitor both while recording, depending on software, you need to set it up so you can monitor the input, then you can listen from the soundcard. In cubase, protools etc there should be a button next to the record enable button, which should allow you to hear it. Be aware to switch it off when listening back though, otherwise you won't hear anything.

Thank's for your input.. i will try your suggestion if the previous one doesn't work for me.

[dualflip]

Regarding the aux sends, it must be the FX send output, and it is controled most of the time by a rotary knob on the channel just ontop of the fader bellow the eq, it must also have a pre/post switch, so yes when i said lower the fader i meant turn down the fader on the mixing console, but in order to do that the send must be in "pre" mode, this "decouples" the fader and the send, meaning that the fader wont affect the signal in the auxiliary. Regarding the cable, a normal TR or TRS cable (also called plug) will do the job.

When i said to return the DAW signal into your mixer i meant, plug one of the outputs of your soundcard into a mixer's channel, or into the tape return jacks. In your DAW you must have a monitoring section, meaning you can select wich channel you are going to record is going to be monitored. That way you wont be hearing what you are sending from the mixer to the DAW (because you lowered the fader) instead you are going to hear what is being actually recorded on the DAW.

If this doesnt solve your question, please let me know and ill be happy to help you.