Setting levels, tips & tricks

shadow5606

New member
Just posted this thread in "recording techniques" & got some good ideas. thought I'd put it here to for anyone w/ any ideas.

I'm really new to this so bear w/ me arlight...

I'm recording acoustic guitar with a Rode NT1-A condenser through a Behringer MX602A to an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 sound card. My DAW is SONAR 2.0 XL.

My mixer manual says to set all knobs on my chanel to the 12'oclock position & adjust only the gain till the meter on the mixer is hitting good levels w/o clipping.

Only thing is that I get a fair amount of noise by cranking the gain that high. Then I have to lower the volume/level of the chanel so that it's not clipping on SONAR.

Basically it clips much sooner in SONAR than it does on the mixer meter.

If I have the mixer gain lower & play w/ the volume/level of the chanel I tend to get a slightly better sound but of course a lower overall volume that's no where near clipping on SONAR.

How would any of you set up your mixer & SONAR for this kind of recording? Any general tips for this kind of setup would be greatly appreciated.
 
As I said (just to let everyone know) I set my volume fader to 0 (not minimum, but no amplification or reduction of the signal) and then control the gain till I'm happy with what the meters show me in Sonar. I don't use the mixers meter at all... ;)
 
Yes, forget the mixer meter, the meter you have to be concerned with is the one that monitors the RECORDING signal.
Carlos
 
Mixer, gain vs. chanel volume vs. main mix volume

Ok, well... If I forget the mixer meter I've got 3 main factors in controlling the output to SONAR... my mixers gain setting, the slider/volume for the track on my mixer & the main slider/volume for the out of my mixer.

To get the least "noise" & the best input to SONAR which of these should I be messing with?

So far what I'm hearing is to set the track volume at 0, maybe the main mix slider at 0 also? & just tweak the gain?
 
Re: Mixer, gain vs. chanel volume vs. main mix volume

shadow5606 said:
So far what I'm hearing is to set the track volume at 0, maybe the main mix slider at 0 also? & just tweak the gain?
That's what I do... (well, actually I'm using the insert-channels to connect the mixer to my soundcard because I have a 8 input soundcard).
 
sounds good to me man, thanks for the help!

Let me run this by you... for monitoring do you run headphones from you mixer or from your PC?

I get a much louder/better signal from my mixer but once I've laid down my rythm guitar part I need to hear that to sing so I'll hook my headphones up to the PC speakers... much quieter so I have to crank up the volume but it gets me by...

How possible is it to route your PC sound out to your mixer & then out of your mixer to your speakers/monitors?

right now I'm runing 2 RCA cables from my mixers to the 2 in's on my Audiophile 2496, then my L&R RCA outs from my Audiophile to my PC speaker system.
 
To run your output monitoring through your mixer you have to use a different channel, otherwise your audio playback will be looped.
 
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