recording setup for vocals and iphone out

krishna-icm

New member
I am an Indian classical vocalist. I sing to the tabla sounds coming from my iPhone app. Ideally I prefer having a louder tabla while I am singing but be able to reduce the tabla volume in the recording. Any recommendations for this setup?

Here's the gear I have: a mixer, audio interface from MAudio called Duo, mac with garage band, mic and a bluetooth speaker. Appreciate any help here, I have been trying this for ages.
 
my suggestions . . .

1 connect iphone to one of the Duo channels (say channel 1). You will need a cable (or cable plus adaptors) to do this.
2 connect mic to mac via USB (if it is a USB mike) or the other channel (say channel 2) of the Duo (with an XLR to XLR cable).
3 set up Garageband to record two tracks, track 1 recording tabla from channel 1, track 2 recording mike from channel2 (or from USB).
4 get a set of headphones to monitor with.
5 plug headphones into Duo.
6 press 'direct monitor' on DUo
7 hit record then go for it,
 
Thank you! I’ll try the direct monitoring. I have an XLR mic. Questions:

1) Is there a way I can get only the tabla (from iphone) into my headphones and not my own voice?

2) For some reason, the recording volumes are very low when I record directly from the Duo. If I give inputs to my mixer, mixer out to duo and duo usb to mac, I am able to get the volume up by playing with the gain on the mixer. Any idea what may be my problem giving inputs directly to duo?
 
If volumes are low coming out of the Duo, turn the input gain up. If you have done this, make sure the 'pad' buttons are not pressed.

In any case, it is always possible to raiuse the volume later in garage band.

YOU can always bring your mix into play. Plug iphone into mixer, then mixer into Duo. Plug mike straight into Duo. Then plug headphones inot the mixer. That way you only hear tabla.
 
YOU can always bring your mix into play. Plug iphone into mixer, then mixer into Duo. Plug mike straight into Duo. Then plug headphones inot the mixer. That way you only hear tabla.

Interesting. Does this mean the mixer out goes to one of the channels of the duo? How does it work? The mixer out has L and R. Do I play iphone on the left and only take the L of mixer into into duo channel 2?
 
Seeing as it is just the ipad going into the mixer, you can take either left or right from the mixer to feed into line in of Duo.
 
Would it not be simpler to copy the tabla track from the phone onto the mac? Then load that track into GB and play it back from there.

If you do that, you can turn off input monitoring, so you'll only hear the tabla in the headphones.
 
Would it not be simpler to copy the tabla track from the phone onto the mac? Then load that track into GB and play it back from there.

If you do that, you can turn off input monitoring, so you'll only hear the tabla in the headphones.

That could work. Although I need to record all the pitches, speeds and meters combinations that I typically use from the iphone app into garageband tracks.

I also ordered an audio splitter. So iphone out split into two, one could go to speaker/headphones and another to duo and avoid the mixer.
 
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Why do you want to avoid the mixer?

I tried the mixer/duo/headphones/multi track recording solution and it seems to work just fine (thank you!). I wanted to improve it further by using a speaker instead of the headphones since I’m not used to singing with headphones. The speaker I have is Harman Kardon Onyx Studio, a bluetooth speaker. I took the Phones output of my mixer and gave it to the Aux input of my Onyx. It gives a buzzing electric noise along with some feeble sound for some reason. The aux input works fine if I connect my iphone directly to the aux input. The wire itself is fine. Something about the Phones output of the mixer and Aux input of my speaker are not compatible. The problem is worse if I monitor from the Duo. Neither headphones nor the speaker works. The headphones gives cracking noise as if the sound is clipped or distorted.

So trying if an audio splitter going to speakers and duo directly would solve it.
 
An issue with using speaker instead of headphones is that the mike will also pick up the tabla coming out the speakers when you are singing along to them. That may affect your chances of getting good results later. It's worth getting used to headphones.
 
I tried the mixer/duo/headphones/multi track recording solution and it seems to work just fine (thank you!). I wanted to improve it further by using a speaker instead of the headphones since I’m not used to singing with headphones. The speaker I have is Harman Kardon Onyx Studio, a bluetooth speaker. I took the Phones output of my mixer and gave it to the Aux input of my Onyx. It gives a buzzing electric noise along with some feeble sound for some reason. The aux input works fine if I connect my iphone directly to the aux input. The wire itself is fine. Something about the Phones output of the mixer and Aux input of my speaker are not compatible. The problem is worse if I monitor from the Duo. Neither headphones nor the speaker works. The headphones gives cracking noise as if the sound is clipped or distorted.

So trying if an audio splitter going to speakers and duo directly would solve it.

Those splitters are rarely a very good solution. They split the signal, but they also add noise and reduce the level.
 
Those splitters are rarely a very good solution. They split the signal, but they also add noise and reduce the level.

I see. Will keen in mind.

I found a simpler solution. My iphone can be directly hooked up to the mac as a sound source and imported into Garageband! Here's what I had to do:
1) Upgrade to the latest mac os Catalina
2) Audio Midi Setup -> enable iphone as a sound source
3) Audio Midi Setup -> Create an aggregate device. This combines my iphone left/right channels along with the mic into one big device to use in GB
4) Multi track record with all the tracks.
5) I enabled input monitoring the track containing tabla and had the sound into headphones!

*****
Update: The monitoring from Garageband seems to have latency. I thought I was onto something :)
I also searched for lightning splitter thinking that splitting digital shouldn't cause any degradation and it should also solve latency. For some reason I don't see adapters that split the digital sound coming into the lightning cable.
So I'm back to mixer/duo I guess.
 
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