I have a bunch of questions about recording...

J

Jsn7821

New member
Alright I don't know where to start, ive been looking for a forum like this to get help for a while. I'm the lead guitarist for my band and pretty much in charge of keeping the recording stuff set up, since we like to record our jam's and stuff. Ill start out with the equipment I have I guess.

Mics: SM57, and two PG48s. Looking into another SM57 or two.
Mixer: Eurorack UB1832FX-Pro (is this any good?)
Sound card: Sound blaster live 5.1
Guitar amps: Marshal 50dfx, vox valvetronix 30 watt.
Bass: Hartke 350 watt head with hartke cabinet.
Drumset with just the essentials.
Then we have a epiphone G-400 SG, and an agile gold on black les paul. The bass is some music-man ripoff by OLP.

First off I need to know if theres anything we need to buy or borrow for good recording. I have the vox amp miced with the SM57, the bass amp and marshall both have Line-Outs that we use instead of mics. The drumset gets both PG48's on it.

Basically, I want to know how much I can do with that mixer and if it was a good buy or not (sale for $200 or so). I also have no idea what stages I want to amplify the signal at, the gain knob, volume thing, sub, master. Really I have no idea about mixers besides it gets the job done and plugs into my comptuer and I can hit record.

I need to know stuff like the optimal distance away from the guitar amp that I want the mic, how it should be angled, and stuff like that.

Do I want to cut off any frequencies? If so, how? We wont be recording a singer for a while, we play funk, rock, jazz and some times a little heavier but very instrumental peices.

I am asking a lot of questions that can get really complicated from what I have read around here, so I will leave it at those. Also I dont exactly want to buy more stuff, but I made some money this summer that I can spend if it will make the difference.
 
1. most people would suggest a better sound card. the sound card convertors are critical. for quality recording. a lot of folks like delta 44.
2. if you need a computer to record to i like and use amd processor based systems. a good athlon will do 48 tracks easily.
3. a technique you might try some time and told to me years back by an engineer i respect on recording a small band "the old ways".
put the drums back a ways from two guitar amps spaced about 20 feet apart in a fairly live(not totally damped) room.(you must experiment a lot with this technique). the idea is the 2 mics on the guitar amps pick up the drums behind. bass player direct0thru a bass device. you then overdub
after having layed down the bed track with this approach. ie; lead guitars, vox , back up etc etc and maybe another track of drums. you could eliminate the acoustic kik drum by using a trigger.
4. a great multitrack software i like is powertracks for 29 bucks from pgmusic.
48 digital audio tracks.
just some ideas that have worked for me.
 
ps - your probably also going to need a headphone distn system to send mixes to the phones of the band while they are laying tracks.
and maybe a set of monitors. you could use a home hi fi for monitoring in the interim. if you need a pair of monitors yorkvilles are bang for buck.
aslso consider setting up an isolated area or control room from where you record the band in another room.
cant comment on the mixer. powertracks will let you add rvb/echo etc and other fx after recording tracks if you wish. some would recommend a better mixer i'm sure. there are ALWAYS BETTER. so go with what you got for nowand see if it works.
on the mics there are ALWAYS better mics. if your stuck for dough ive used spkrs as mics (only on guitar amps) and on some tracks in the past ive got better results with this (fluke perhaps) than using some of my better mics. eg : soundclick.com/bmanning the lets move it man song.
all the best.
 
manning1 said:
1. most people would suggest a better sound card. the sound card convertors are critical. for quality recording. a lot of folks like delta 44.
2. if you need a computer to record to i like and use amd processor based systems. a good athlon will do 48 tracks easily.
3. a technique you might try some time and told to me years back by an engineer i respect on recording a small band "the old ways".
put the drums back a ways from two guitar amps spaced about 20 feet apart in a fairly live(not totally damped) room.(you must experiment a lot with this technique). the idea is the 2 mics on the guitar amps pick up the drums behind. bass player direct0thru a bass device. you then overdub
after having layed down the bed track with this approach. ie; lead guitars, vox , back up etc etc and maybe another track of drums. you could eliminate the acoustic kik drum by using a trigger.
4. a great multitrack software i like is powertracks for 29 bucks from pgmusic.
48 digital audio tracks.
just some ideas that have worked for me.
Click to expand...

I was looking into a new sound card untill I found out that the mixer I have only appears to have one main line out?? Is this correct or am i missing something.

I have an AMD 2600+ computer so it shouldn't limit anything. Right now I have a copy of Cool-Edit Pro, is this a good program?

for what you said on #3 I think I understand only I wont be able to overdub stuff because most of what we want to record are jams.
 
actually, your mixer can give you up to 3 sets of stereo outs, but also remember, each channel has insert points, which can be used as direct outs if you get a delta 22/66/1010. just plug a quarter inch plug in until you hear the first click.

cool edit pro is fine

you said that you mostly want to do jams......................since you have insert points on channels 1-6, you can send those out seperatley. If you can find a six input soundcard in your price range, then you can go back and set volumes and pan the stuff later. get the delta 66, and run four things seperatley, then the other two should just be from the master outs of the mixer. have fun!
 
I have been hearing a lot about a delta, and I think im gonna get one. Whats the difference between the 22/44/66/1010?

For two guitars, bass, a drumset, and possibly a singer... which would I want to use the channel outs for? Why would I also want to run a master out?

We would have 6 lines comming into the mixer for now, but in the future I hope to get more mic's and have probably a max of 10 mic's/direct outs going to the mixer.

Is ebay a good place to look for deltas? any good deals floating around? will I be able to use the delta and my sound card I have right now at the same time?
 
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I asked this in my orignal post but I don't know if it was clear what I was asking, I am not sure where to amplify the signal and to how much. I just adjust the gain to as high as I can get it without distortion, then the volume to where it matches the other instruments volume (keep in mind im only going on one master-out from the mixer right now). Then I press the "sub" button if it needs to be a bit louder. Then the "main mix" levels I try and adjust to get the same levels as a song on any old cd.
 
can anyone help me out? I also have some questions about making the sound quality better in my room but ill wait till these are answered... thanks
 
Jsn7821 said:
I asked this in my orignal post but I don't know if it was clear what I was asking, I am not sure where to amplify the signal and to how much. I just adjust the gain to as high as I can get it without distortion, then the volume to where it matches the other instruments volume (keep in mind im only going on one master-out from the mixer right now). Then I press the "sub" button if it needs to be a bit louder. Then the "main mix" levels I try and adjust to get the same levels as a song on any old cd.
Click to expand...
It's still kind of unclear, but I'll take a shot at it.......

The only time you should really be adding any gain is on the way into the recorder at the mic pre level... that is where you bring the mic level of the sound source up to where it needs to be.... after that, it becomes a line-level signal to be blended with the other line level signals at the console.

You'll never match the levels on a commerical CD at this stage since commercial CDs these days are mastered and (unfortunately) part of that process involves raising the overall level to ridiculous amounts (at the expense of musical dynamics!)
 
How do I know how far I can take the mic pre level up to? Just by ear? Thats what I've been doing... It seems I have to do this every time we start because we may be playing a bit louder then the last time. Is there an easy way to do this without a control room?
 
re: how far to take mic level up to.
i dont know much about the eurorack. but i suspect you have an overload indicator on each channel , most mixers do. if thats the case you bring up the mic level so that the overload indicator only lights up very occassionally.
what i do is find that level THEN back off a bit. then in my multitrack software i check the incoming level from the sound card when i arm the track for recording and make sure the top transients top out at about -2db
to -4db. then i record. there is quite a knack to this with some vocallists if you dont have a limiter in the mixer chain.
NOW - if your going DIRECT OUT from the mic pre channel on some mixers the overload light might not apply. in this case you would check in the recording software as before. in daws though ONE RULE . YOU MUST NOT HIT THE 0DB brickwall otherwise the audio can get distorted.
hence the -2db suggestion when recording on a daw.
 
What sound card do I want? the 66 or the 1010? I have 6 inputs (2 drums, 1 vocal, 2 guitar, 1 bass) going into the mixer... My goal is to get them all seperatly then in the future add an omnescent (is this the right word?) microphone in the middle of the room to pick up funn stuff mostly our bass player yells out. So 7 or 8 inputs in the future. Should I go all out and get the 1010? Where can I get this for cheap, I heard they are switching to firewire/usb soon so they should start to get inexpensive for PCI? Is that true?
 
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