I can't seem to get my better mics to record onto CEP-2. Neither my EV 635A nor my Sennheiser Studio Mic will register. However, my cheapo $7.89 keroke mike from Target drops down one helluva wave. I know it's a line vis mic control issue. Where in either CEP or my Win 98 mixer do I click to get these levels to match?
Mic issues with CEP: Won't record
- Thread starter VONewbie
- Start date
You really need a preamp. Get a cheap mini mixer like a Behringer - you should really be using a proper 3 wire XLR cable from those mics to get the best result. As it is, what sort of cable/adapter are you using to connect your better mics into the pc mic input? The one you should have converts balanced (3wire) to unbalanced (2wire) operation but a small mixer will provide a proper balanced preamp and drive the line-in of the soundcard. You'll get a less noisy recording with better quality all round.
You confirmed my suspicions.
I was thinking these mics needed some preamplification. I don't have a switcher yet. I'm looking at either a Peavy or a Mackie. Right now I am using 3 wire XLR with a 1/4 jack on the male end of the cable. Then I'm adapting it down to a 1/8 jack to plug into the sound card.
I was thinking these mics needed some preamplification. I don't have a switcher yet. I'm looking at either a Peavy or a Mackie. Right now I am using 3 wire XLR with a 1/4 jack on the male end of the cable. Then I'm adapting it down to a 1/8 jack to plug into the sound card.
lpdeluxe
The Precision Bass Guy
You have a mic which puts out a very low-level signal, and you are feeding it into an input that wants a line-level signal. A small mixer will boost the mic output to line level and that will improve things. A sound card with a proper input will improve things further. Mini-plugs are notoriously noisy, as least as implemented in sound cards.
For explanations of levels and balanced lines and much more check out Rane's
http://www.rane.com/digi-dic.html
You'll find a tremendous amount of information there, along with some pretty good geek jokes.
For explanations of levels and balanced lines and much more check out Rane's
http://www.rane.com/digi-dic.html
You'll find a tremendous amount of information there, along with some pretty good geek jokes.
lpdeluxe
The Precision Bass Guy
Turned into a very pretty evening: I spent a couple of hours out playing Dobro with a church group rehearsing for July (we'll have a pseudo-bluegrass lineup for the month's services with guitars, Dobro, fiddle, banjo & shaped-note choir) and everything is in the key of G! At one point the leader wanted my Dobro louder and I accomodated, while offering to bring my Les Paul the next time.
Life is good.
Life is good.
Well, I'm gonna try this. Then I'm gonna try something else.
Well, the guy at the music store let me rent a 12 Channel Mackie for the night. Gonna see if that works. Makes no sense to me that a Mackie 6 Channel mixer selling on line for under $190 costs less than a preamp.
Also got a Soundblaster card to replace the one that came with my computer. That's what we use on the computers at work and the mics run great through CEP without preamps or mixer preamps.
IPdeluxe, I'm glad it dried up last night. Looks like the eastern half of the Republic is still in for a wet week. They were evacuating people in the Big D today.
Well, the guy at the music store let me rent a 12 Channel Mackie for the night. Gonna see if that works. Makes no sense to me that a Mackie 6 Channel mixer selling on line for under $190 costs less than a preamp.
Also got a Soundblaster card to replace the one that came with my computer. That's what we use on the computers at work and the mics run great through CEP without preamps or mixer preamps.
IPdeluxe, I'm glad it dried up last night. Looks like the eastern half of the Republic is still in for a wet week. They were evacuating people in the Big D today.
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Jeeze!
Still having problems, Lester.
I think the Mackie mixer they let me rent has issues. Had to crank the sliders up all the way just to get the mic to register on the LED's. Got a signal into CEP, but it wasn't clean.
So, then I installed the Soundblaster Live card in the box, then ran the CD to install the software...nothing. Plugged the mic in and nada. But here's the weird thing; just for the hell of it, I plugged the mic into the original sound card mic port (it's part of the mother board, so I couldn't remove it) and I get mic level all of a sudden on CEP. The fidelity was tinty, but I got level. I'm totally confused.
Thing is, at work, my Sennheiser 421 mic plugs into the sound card on the computers there, and it shoots perfect levels into CEP, with excellent fidelity and amplitude. I just don't get it.
Meantime, my voice over agent is shooting audition scripts at me and I'm dead in the water. I'm having to cut the scripts at work, email to my home computer and then send them on. It's a real PITA!
I'm thinking of calling Gateway, explaining my exact needs and having a custom box built. This old IBM is just past it's prime for the kind of audio work I want to do.
Still having problems, Lester.
I think the Mackie mixer they let me rent has issues. Had to crank the sliders up all the way just to get the mic to register on the LED's. Got a signal into CEP, but it wasn't clean.
So, then I installed the Soundblaster Live card in the box, then ran the CD to install the software...nothing. Plugged the mic in and nada. But here's the weird thing; just for the hell of it, I plugged the mic into the original sound card mic port (it's part of the mother board, so I couldn't remove it) and I get mic level all of a sudden on CEP. The fidelity was tinty, but I got level. I'm totally confused.
Thing is, at work, my Sennheiser 421 mic plugs into the sound card on the computers there, and it shoots perfect levels into CEP, with excellent fidelity and amplitude. I just don't get it.
Meantime, my voice over agent is shooting audition scripts at me and I'm dead in the water. I'm having to cut the scripts at work, email to my home computer and then send them on. It's a real PITA!
I'm thinking of calling Gateway, explaining my exact needs and having a custom box built. This old IBM is just past it's prime for the kind of audio work I want to do.
lpdeluxe
The Precision Bass Guy
Probably you have to disable the built-in sound card in order to use the PCI. That's what was done on my current computer (I say done, because I had the shop that was building it disable the onboard sound card & video card).
There is lots of advice about building a computer, here and all around the net, and there are advocates of every motherboard, processor, and brand of RAM you can imagine, but the basics are: a fast mb/processor (these days, P4 or equivalent), at least 512MB of RAM, and 2 7200 RPM hard drives (one for operating, one for audio). My local shop built me one that's been very stable for $700, minus the case. And I recommend XP, for the simple reason that all the new software is written to run on it. My wife & I have 3 XPs, all running trouble-free. Disable the onboard sound and video cards (they eat up horsepower) and install the card you have and a midrange video (assuming you're not a hardcore gamer or anything) and KEEP EVERYTHING ELSE OFF THE COMPUTER! I have 2 computers, the one I'm typing on which I also use for graphics, and my recording setup, and the recording one stays in the studio with recording software and CD burning software running and that's about it. [My son-in-law is a computer geek, and he constantly brings me software to load on the recorder, like Shockwave, or the latest mp3 whatnot and I have to bar the door to keep him away from my baby.]
There is lots of advice about building a computer, here and all around the net, and there are advocates of every motherboard, processor, and brand of RAM you can imagine, but the basics are: a fast mb/processor (these days, P4 or equivalent), at least 512MB of RAM, and 2 7200 RPM hard drives (one for operating, one for audio). My local shop built me one that's been very stable for $700, minus the case. And I recommend XP, for the simple reason that all the new software is written to run on it. My wife & I have 3 XPs, all running trouble-free. Disable the onboard sound and video cards (they eat up horsepower) and install the card you have and a midrange video (assuming you're not a hardcore gamer or anything) and KEEP EVERYTHING ELSE OFF THE COMPUTER! I have 2 computers, the one I'm typing on which I also use for graphics, and my recording setup, and the recording one stays in the studio with recording software and CD burning software running and that's about it. [My son-in-law is a computer geek, and he constantly brings me software to load on the recorder, like Shockwave, or the latest mp3 whatnot and I have to bar the door to keep him away from my baby.]
Sheesh.
It's become a nightmare, Lester. A fellow on the Adobe user board managed to get me into CEP's options area. And despite changing device order to SB, CEP wants to default to the OB card anyway. Now I'm getting this:
" MMSystem 003 The driver was not enabled." I got no clue what that means.
There's a place here in town that "cleans" boxes, does maintenence, etc. I may take it over to them and have the OB card disabled. I've been all over the control panel of WIN 98 and can't find what I'm looking for to disable the OB card.
I bet this box is 6 +years old. An old IBM 300 PI. Bought it used from one of those used computer joints. Doesn't even have a CD burner. Probably the best thing to do is pull the new card, uninstall the software, and take it back. Then I'll give this box to my 11-year-old for school work and have a box made specifically for audio work.
Thanks for your help.
Drew Hadwal
It's become a nightmare, Lester. A fellow on the Adobe user board managed to get me into CEP's options area. And despite changing device order to SB, CEP wants to default to the OB card anyway. Now I'm getting this:
" MMSystem 003 The driver was not enabled." I got no clue what that means.
There's a place here in town that "cleans" boxes, does maintenence, etc. I may take it over to them and have the OB card disabled. I've been all over the control panel of WIN 98 and can't find what I'm looking for to disable the OB card.
I bet this box is 6 +years old. An old IBM 300 PI. Bought it used from one of those used computer joints. Doesn't even have a CD burner. Probably the best thing to do is pull the new card, uninstall the software, and take it back. Then I'll give this box to my 11-year-old for school work and have a box made specifically for audio work.
Thanks for your help.
Drew Hadwal
dobro
Well-known member
"Then I'll give this box to my 11-year-old for school work and have a box made specifically for audio work."
That might be the lesson here. One thing for sure: if this is driving you nuts, then that's a sign that recording is important enough to you to merit a computer dedicated primarily to that. Which means having a soundcard dedicated to recording, and nothing else on board. Good luck with it.
That might be the lesson here. One thing for sure: if this is driving you nuts, then that's a sign that recording is important enough to you to merit a computer dedicated primarily to that. Which means having a soundcard dedicated to recording, and nothing else on board. Good luck with it.
Many Thanks...
...to all of you. I've got things working, quite well. I can only hope as time goes on, and I pour through that 379 page manual, which cost about $23 at Office Depot to print out, that I'll be able to offer the same kind of expert help you folks offered me. I truly appreciate it.
Drew Hadwal
...to all of you. I've got things working, quite well. I can only hope as time goes on, and I pour through that 379 page manual, which cost about $23 at Office Depot to print out, that I'll be able to offer the same kind of expert help you folks offered me. I truly appreciate it.
Drew Hadwal
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chrisharris
King of Bling
I was gonna' suggest that the nicer mics probably need phantom power that cheap dynamics don't. If you got the Mackie board I think you did (DFX 6), it's got it.
But you're probably beyond this by now, lol. By the way, that's a cool little board. I actually use it live for my acoustic gigs. Very friendly board.
But you're probably beyond this by now, lol. By the way, that's a cool little board. I actually use it live for my acoustic gigs. Very friendly board.
Oh, yeah.
That Mackie is a sweet board, Chris. I was actually using a 12 channel the local music store allowed me to rent. It does boost my Sennheiser 421 to a sweet wave. That's really more mixer than I need. Looking at buying a DFX 6.
The new SB card does give me a level w/o a mixer. But I'm finding that I really have to toy with the normalization, dynamics, and gates in CEP to boost the wave. I get a decent signal to noise ratio, but I really have to "cook" the wave after I lay down a track.
That Mackie is a sweet board, Chris. I was actually using a 12 channel the local music store allowed me to rent. It does boost my Sennheiser 421 to a sweet wave. That's really more mixer than I need. Looking at buying a DFX 6.
The new SB card does give me a level w/o a mixer. But I'm finding that I really have to toy with the normalization, dynamics, and gates in CEP to boost the wave. I get a decent signal to noise ratio, but I really have to "cook" the wave after I lay down a track.
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