VERY green to the tech side of music, want to get good sound (FB Live, PC recording)

H

hotwired99

New member
Good Afternoon,


I'm just getting into the "solo acoustic" stuff, being my "second act" upon semi retirement. With the quarantine, I'm trying to do some FB Live stuff as well as creating and posting cover songs on YouTube. I am woefully ignorant in the tech side of music. I know how to play, sort of know how to sing (haha), but I'm the farthest thing from a tone snob and barely even know what a DAW is.

I have a soundcraft notepad (two actually 8fx and 12fx). I go OUT of the headphone out INTO the line in of my PC and that seems to do the trick BUT I have to be careful not to be too high, it's touchy. I can record that way using my simple windows 10 supplied webcam camera app and it's not horrible, and at least I have some effects. Sometimes the guitar sound is not great though. It's a Taylor 314CE but older, not the expression system.

I did a couple of concerts for the Social Distancing Tour of our local radio station but that was literally 2 iphones open broadcasting to two FB Live feeds (2 radio stations FB pages). 100% unplugged. I'm not thrilled with the sound but honestly, when I try to do Live FB using the above PC setup I described it's not great either. Not bad, but not great.

I tried to hook the board up to my samsung S8 using OTG adaptor (came out the soundcrafts's USB out into the OTG adaptor, into the usb port of phone. Nothing but super loud static, even turned down). So going from board to phone ... not there yet at all. I'm going to try my Zoom H4n as intermediary tomorrow after the concert (in case I mess up my phone). I can go from the headphone out of the mixer, to the mic input of the H4N to my LAPTOP via USB to FB live and it's NOT bad, so that's a possibility. But why can't I just go from board to laptop?? Strange.

Anyway, if any of you have some suggestions that would be easier or far superior, let me know. I'd like to be able to do these REALLY well, and have a fantastic sound. I've read about so many gizmos...irig pro duo, USB mic's that go straight into phone, etc. In fact I'm going to maybe try using my H4N as an external mic direct to my phone. It would still be open air recording me unplugged but at least the H4N is a killer set of microphones.

Thanks to you all, and stay safe.
 
You should be able to go from the board right to the laptop via the USB. Using the headphone output is about 5th or 6th on my list of ways to do it. The H4n can serve as an audio interface to the laptop (maybe the phone via OTG?) so that's an option, but you shouldn't use the headphone output, you should use the RCA line level recording output. If you don't already have one, get a dual RCA-1/4" (6.35mm) cable. Do a couple of test recordings until you get the mix right.

Consider getting a high quality webcam so you can place it independently.

I think using the onboard mics of the H4n would be worth trying. But the nice thing about using one mic for voice and one mic for guitar into the Notepad is that you could eq them separately and add a little reverb.

One thing you can't do live with your gear is compression. Compression squeezes the dynamics (quiet vs. loud) down to make things a bit more controlled. If I were doing a live solo webcast I would want voice and guitar separately compressed plus a compressor over the whole mix. But that's going to take gear that you don't have and probably don't want to attempt at this stage.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
You should be able to go from the board right to the laptop via the USB. Using the headphone output is about 5th or 6th on my list of ways to do it. The H4n can serve as an audio interface to the laptop (maybe the phone via OTG?) so that's an option, but you shouldn't use the headphone output, you should use the RCA line level recording output. If you don't already have one, get a dual RCA-1/4" (6.35mm) cable. Do a couple of test recordings until you get the mix right.

Consider getting a high quality webcam so you can place it independently.

I think using the onboard mics of the H4n would be worth trying. But the nice thing about using one mic for voice and one mic for guitar into the Notepad is that you could eq them separately and add a little reverb.

One thing you can't do live with your gear is compression. Compression squeezes the dynamics (quiet vs. loud) down to make things a bit more controlled. If I were doing a live solo webcast I would want voice and guitar separately compressed plus a compressor over the whole mix. But that's going to take gear that you don't have and probably don't want to attempt at this stage.
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THANK YOU for all this. Now what is it about the headphone out that isn't the best? I have tried to go directly from the "Aux out" which is the only other out besides the headphones and two XLR outputs. The signal I get though is terrible. 1/10th of the volume of the headphone out but distorted, like the guitar is using a fuzzbox. Maybe using adaptors to go from the actual XLR outs down to a small one that plugs into the line in on back of PC.
 
hotwired99 said:
THANK YOU for all this. Now what is it about the headphone out that isn't the best? I have tried to go directly from the "Aux out" which is the only other out besides the headphones and two XLR outputs. The signal I get though is terrible. 1/10th of the volume of the headphone out but distorted, like the guitar is using a fuzzbox. Maybe using adaptors to go from the actual XLR outs down to a small one that plugs into the line in on back of PC.
Click to expand...

The 1/8" (3.5mm) input of a laptop is almost certainly designed for a microphone. As such it's very sensitive, designed to raise the very weak mic signal up to a usable level. A headphone output is usually quite strong, meant to physically move the little speakers in the headphones. So you probably have to run the headphone level very low where even a tiny movement of the knob makes a huge difference in level. Add to that the possibility that the mic input is mono and you've got a significant mismatch in signal types. The mitigating factor is that at least with the headphone output you do have a separate volume control.

The aux output is likely a balanced line level signal, quite a bit higher than mic level. That could be even less compatible with the mic input of the laptop (especially if it happens to be stereo).

What it comes down to is that the mic input of the laptop is just not suited to taking signal from a mixer, it's meant for the kind of mic designed for laptops. That said, there are ways to get line level signal into a laptop mic input which work better, but I don't want to overload you with that kind of tech info when there's a better option.

I think we need to determine why your USB connection isn't working. That would be the best option by far. First we need to find out if the mixer uses the default drivers or needs a proprietary driver. I suspect it uses a default driver, which simplifies things for you. You said the USB to phone didn't work. How about USB to laptop?

Is your laptop Mac or Win?
 
I can't thank you enough. I am going to fool around with the USB issue today. I can go from the headphone out to my zoom h4n, and then out of the zooms USB port into the laptop and it sounds really good. I have to really reduce the output or rather the mic input level of the zoom true he women 8 distortion. However I would love to be able to go for my mixing board straight into my phone to do the simplest live Facebook streaming so I will work on that today. I do have an OTG adapter which makes it so that I should be able to go straight from that mixing board right into my Samsung S8. I believe I have already downloaded the drivers on my PC for that Soundcraft. However I'm not sure what the issue is going to the phone. Now that I've done my performance last night, I'm not worried about screwing up my phone so I could be a little braver today! Happy Easter
 
I suspect if the mixer needs a driver on a computer it won't work on a phone without a driver, and there might not be one for your phone.
 
Getting there

bouldersoundguy said:
It looks like you need the proprietary driver to control your Notepad's USB connection. If you have Win7 or Win10, it's at this link:

Notepad Firmware and Control | Soundcraft - Professional Audio Mixers

I suspect a Mac will recognize it natively.
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I'm getting there. I have a zoom h4n recorder. It allows itself to be used as a microphone. I put the guitar into one input and the mic into another, (it has two XLR inputs at the bottom). For whatever reason I could only get one signal at a time. Well both meters showed the same level of signal but only one input showed up on my Facebook live stream. So then I just decided to try using the h4n as an external microphone to the Samsung S8. That worked beautifully except it was still a little hot. I have to set the mic input on the h4n to between 15 and 20 out of a hundred, then I go out of the USB of the h4n into an OTG adapter and then into the USB micro of the phone. The quality of the sound is unbelievable, full dynamic crisp. Of course I don't get any effects like Reverb or anything. But I have managed to do something similar where we went out of the headphone out of my mixing board into the h4n and then out of the h4n into the phone so I can hack around with something like that. But for my usual living room open air Facebook live performances I think just using that h4n as a room microphone will work beautiful.
 
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I have a Zoom H5 so I'm somewhat familiar with the product line. When you record on the H5 in multitrack mode it saves three audio files: stereo, left and right. The stereo mic is treated as one input and the two combo XLR-1/4" inputs are treated as separate inputs. That's probably why Facebook Live only sees one at a time.
 
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