trying to get the most out of my "rig"

[LAWL_im_so_EMO]

So i pretty much have no money, and im trying to get as much out of my rig as possible.

So i before i go into it, i will so that I am NOT trying to get "studio quality" recordings, just some rough demos which are "tolerable"

So right now here is my rig:
computer (fairly decent, dont really care about going into it)
pro tools LE 7.4 MBOX 2
line 6 PODxt

Currently I just record guitar directly and use programmed drums. Its no studio quality, but like i said its tolerable.

For now, my definition of tolerable is no clipping or popping.
So right now i can record my guitar and program my drums with minimal clipping.

So my goal now is to get the most out of vocals. I know i have to spend a little money because i dont have a mic currently.

Im trying to find a way to record vocals without any popping. Now when i record vocals into my pro tools set up, my vocal track always crack and pop, even though the clip indicator never goes into red, so im guessing its my mic because its a 15 dollar radio shack mic.

Right now i plug my mic straigth into my mbox 2.
Will a decent mic, liek a shure sm57 prevent this popping and cracking?

OH an btw, its not the cracking and popping that a filter can fix. Like every sound it picks up always cracks.

 

[stealth_prod]

ok first thing you should understand is that your not going for volume at the recording and mixing stage. You should be nowhere near clipping when you record. Bring the gain levels down and turn the volume on the mbox up to hear it louder. A sm57 will do just fine and is a all around good mic. I personally dont use an mbox but im sure it comes with a decent preamp. If your recording to close to "clipping" then turn the gain down. Seeing your just doing some rough demos you can do your own compressing or limiting later on to get a louder volume. If you ever move past a demo stage you should really concentrate ALOT more on gain staging so mixing will be made tons easier. Good luck.

 

[Lance135]

That could be caused by a lot of things. There are two types of "crackling": analog and digital.

Analog crackling: this would be caused by a bad microphone cable, a bad connection within the microphone, or a bad connection in the preamp.

The only thing you can do for these problems is to replace each component in the chain until you hear the problem go away, then fix the offending piece. Maybe try some "digital troubleshooting" first:

Digital crackling: this is usually caused by an insufficient latency buffer or clocking problem.

Find out how to increase the latency buffer, and try that.

Clocking problems can be caused by other programs (such as a media player) accessing the MBox audio drivers (in Windows, sometimes it will change the sampling frequency, so you may need to change it back to the original setting - possibly 44.1 KHz). You will also want to check that the clock source is set to Internal.

Those are generic things to try. Maybe someone else on here knows of issues specific to the MBox.