MXL 990 Records One Side

[trustify]

When I record on my MXL 990 condensor mic on cool edit pro it records only on one side either left or right so when i play back i only hear the vocal part left or right part of the speakers. I tired alot of things but can't make it into one.

[thajeremy]

to the left of each track is your track settings....you have an input button. when you click that, you are able to choose which input you want to record from. You also have the option of Right only, Left only, or stereo. if your track is recording on top, choose right only, and if its on the bottom choose left. Now when you record, you should end up with a mono track. I see this is your first post, and you are thinking that Im wrong, but you DO want a mono track....it will give you equal signal comming from each speaker.

[Lt. Bob]

Originally Posted by thajeremy

to the left of each track is your track settings....you have an input button. when you click that, you are able to choose which input you want to record from. You also have the option of Right only, Left only, or stereo. if your track is recording on top, choose right only, and if its on the bottom choose left. Now when you record, you should end up with a mono track. I see this is your first post, and you are thinking that Im wrong, but you DO want a mono track....it will give you equal signal comming from each speaker.

yep


the 990 is a mono mic and has nothing to do with whether you get sound out of one side or the other.
Since it's a mono mic ...... there is no value in recording it to stereo even if you could.
Just record it as a mono track and at mixdown, you can pan it where you like.
Vocals usually go dead center anyway which makes them mono.

[trustify]

hmm so whats the point of a mono mic then...i thought it was a decent mic to record both sides just wondering

[mattr]

Because it gives you the most flexibility.

A lot of the time you only want to be recording a mono source, so it would be pointless and impractical to have a stereo mic. When you do need stereo, record with two mics. Recording in mono doesn't mean mixing in mono.

They do make stereo mics, but most people are happy setting up their own stereo pair! There are a few decent affordable ones like the Rode NT4 and some offerings from Audio Technica, but the really decent stereo mics are generally very expensive and aimed at situations like orchestral and theatrical recording. Even then they're generally used in mic arrays, trees, etc. With a stereo mic you're usually limited to what is effectively a XY coincident pair.

[thajeremy]

Originally Posted by trustify

hmm so whats the point of a mono mic then...i thought it was a decent mic to record both sides just wondering

with the settings you were using, the software was looking for a signal from 2 sources. You had your track set up as a stereo track. If you record one vocal track and have it dead center, you end up with the same sound comming from both speakers. If you have a stereo track where both the left and right side are the exact same track, then you are still in the same situation.....the same thing comming from both speakers...only with the stereo track, you are taking up twice as much harddrive space.

True stereo recording takes a stereo mic, which has 2 capsuls, or 2 independant mics....which is more commonly used.....even when recording with 2 mics, you typically do not use a single stereo track...most people record one source with 2 mics on to two mono tracks and then pan them later...