Help with home studio equipment setup

S

stevenyuko

New member
Hello, everyone. I'm still new to this whole equiment setup and seem to be having some bugs getting everything working they way I want it to. What I've done is got pictures of all my equipment along with pics of the connections and put them into a microsoft publisher document so that its easy to move stuff around. What I'm asking is if there is someone out there who can look at my file, and resituate everything and draw in audio and midi lines for the best possible connection for the equipment I have, I would greaty appreciate your help. I spent all day searching through pictures to get all this put together so its simple for the person helping.. Just zoom in and you can read the connection and draw away. Thank you again for your help.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wky44ikjnay

 
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I'm not clueless... just sort of lost......

things I'm lost on is what is the best way to get my mixer to my SIAB, Should I take mikes directly to the SIAB, or to the mixer first? I'm just asking if someone had the same equipment I have.. how would they go about hooking it up for best results. I've drawn the lines for my current set up. Is this the best way to do this?

 
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stevenyuko said:
things I'm lost on is what is the best way to get my mixer to my SIAB, Should I take mikes directly to the SIAB, or to the mixer first? I'm just asking if someone had the same equipment I have.. how would they go about hooking it up for best results. I've drawn the lines for my current set up. Is this the best way to do this?

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Yes, but the point still stands that if you learn about signal paths then you wouldn't ever have to ask such things. I'm amazed you have all that gear and don't know the basic principles of recording?

Someone giving you an answer may help you in the short term, but you should try and understand what is the best way of connecting things and WHY.
 
as I said.. I'm new to recording

technominds said:
Yes, but the point still stands that if you learn about signal paths then you wouldn't ever have to ask such things. I'm amazed you have all that gear and don't know the basic principles of recording?

Someone giving you an answer may help you in the short term, but you should try and understand what is the best way of connecting things and WHY.
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Most of the euipment I had just to fiddle around with at the house. Of course as a guitarist, I'll have amps, guitars and stomp boxes, and I know how to hook that stuff up..
I also play Piano, so it only makes since that I would own a keyboard or two.
I like to sing, so having mic's and mic preamps, and even a harmonizer would be pretty common items.

My point is.. I had lots of equipment that was all serving its own purpose, but until recently when I picked up a mixer and the Fostex Digital Recorder, and a midi interface and control pad... I had never had a need to hook it up to make up the bigger picture. Understand?

I'm asking for help as the best way to get the individual "sets" of equipment to all work together, not how to plug the black cable with a silver end into a whole somewhere. As I said, I'm not stupid.. I know what an audio cable is, and 1/4 and 1/8 inch jacks, and balanced and unbalanced is, and the purpose of a midi cable!

Where I am sort of clueless is mixers and recorders. The recorder has midi jacks, being it has no sequencing abilities and can't record midi information, then exactly what am I using the midi jacks for.. those are the questions I'm looking to be answered. Is it best to wire each mic into the mixer first then come out the line jacks, or the monitor jacks, or the control room jacks over to the recorder... and so forth. I appreciate your input, just its not very helpful input.. thank you though.
 
stevenyuko said:
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Most of the euipment I had just to fiddle around with at the house. Of course as a guitarist, I'll have amps, guitars and stomp boxes, and I know how to hook that stuff up..
I also play Piano, so it only makes since that I would own a keyboard or two.
I like to sing, so having mic's and mic preamps, and even a harmonizer would be pretty common items.

My point is.. I had lots of equipment that was all serving its own purpose, but until recently when I picked up a mixer and the Fostex Digital Recorder, and a midi interface and control pad... I had never had a need to hook it up to make up the bigger picture. Understand?

I'm asking for help as the best way to get the individual "sets" of equipment to all work together, not how to plug the black cable with a silver end into a whole somewhere. As I said, I'm not stupid.. I know what an audio cable is, and 1/4 and 1/8 inch jacks, and balanced and unbalanced is, and the purpose of a midi cable!

Where I am sort of clueless is mixers and recorders. The recorder has midi jacks, being it has no sequencing abilities and can't record midi information, then exactly what am I using the midi jacks for.. those are the questions I'm looking to be answered. Is it best to wire each mic into the mixer first then come out the line jacks, or the monitor jacks, or the control room jacks over to the recorder... and so forth. I appreciate your input, just its not very helpful input.. thank you though.
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Right, well ive had a look and there are a few questions.

Are you using the recorder to record, or the PC and some tracking software? (I recommend the later)
Do you intend to record any MIDI parts?
Why do you have two mixers? Surely your digital mixer has enough inputs? (And probably is less noisy than your behringer one)

What is the purpose for this recording setup? Live recording? A couple of ideas? Or proper production?

At the moment, it just seems like a load of equipment being connected to one another for no real purpose but for the sake of using it all?
 
technominds said:
Right, well ive had a look and there are a few questions.

Are you using the recorder to record, or the PC and some tracking software? (I recommend the later)
Click to expand...

I'm using the recorder to record the Audio from guitars and mikes, and keyboards (if needed)

technominds said:
Do you intend to record any MIDI parts?
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Yes I will record midi. Mostly midi recording will be done on the PC then sent to recorder once I've got a mix that I like and combine it with the audio mixing I've done on the fostex. I know.. not the most effiecient way to do things and I'm sure it makes it difficult to get a final mix and mastering. Mostly I will Use the PC for the plugin and software potential to get the sounds I want from my keyboards.

technominds said:
Why do you have two mixers? Surely your digital mixer has enough inputs? (And probably is less noisy than your behringer one)
Click to expand...

The problem with the Fostex is I can only do 8 physical connections. I can do 16 track recording (8 direct, 8 buss) and if I connect an ADAT then I can get a total of 24 tracking capabilities. The Zoom Voice harmonizer takes up two of the 8 right away. the two guitar amps take up an additional two. the Casio keyboard takes up 2 (unless I really wanted to record in mono, but if I have the ability to record in stereo, I prefer that option as it gives me some ability to do some panning effects). The Yamaha takes up an additional spot as well. That leaves me the mics... I have the MXL-990 Condenser Mic, and a second mike that I use for milking my bongos, or amps or whatever I want to milk for some additional sound. The recorder is an older recorder so I really hate pulling plugs and moving plugs around too much so I mostly am using the mixer for the two keyboards and the inputs from the harmonizer as I really don't use the harmonizer for recording tracks... It makes for some really dirty tracks because its just too difficult to isolate the guitar while playing from the mic and you end up getting a track with your vocals along with some unwanted harmonized guitar parts. lol



technominds said:
What is the purpose for this recording setup? Live recording? A couple of ideas? Or proper production?
Click to expand...

Mostly this will be used for the occasional song idea that comes through my head. The CD's that I burn sit in a CD case for me to listen to and show off to family. But the real purpose is for good memories as I have a very musical family. My wife is a classic pianist, I play Jazz piano, guitar, drums, accordian (yes... I did say that, don't laugh) and fiddle around with many folk instruments like pan flutes and such. I like techno as well so occasionally I like to create some interesting techno/trance style of music. Just whatever seems to float my boat on that particular day. My son is very good at the Japanese Samisen (3 string guitar) and hopefully my youngest will pick up something too. I probably will never be selling my CD's but I would to have some lasting, and good sounding recording of the music my family makes together that we can cherish for a while.

technominds said:
At the moment, it just seems like a load of equipment being connected to one another for no real purpose but for the sake of using it all?
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Yes, I do have lots of equipment, and trust me, its not all shown in that picture, that just the stuff I find important enough to make sure I have it all connected correctly. I run a Karaoke show and occasionally If I get really good singers, I will invite them by to record their performance for keep sake, and also I bring my recorder to Karaoke Contest and make CD's of everyone's performance. Hopefully that answered your questions. Thank you.
 
OK..

If you are not recording all those instruments at the same time, then I would personally scrap the behringer mixer and just plug whatever needs to be plugged into the mixer in.. when you need to record that instrument.

If you keep all that stuff connected via the Behringer mixer you will find that routing stuff will be difficult, maybe impossible, and will also sound noisy.
 
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