Hi, just need a little help.

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Mister Lacey

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I'm using Sonar Home edition 6 and have a Tascam US224 as my sound card and am running a Presonus Pretube into it and my AKG 850 mic (rubbish I know) into the pre. I'm just trying to record some rap vocals now and then but just can't get them to sound right, where on the pre should I have the drive and gain set and what if any buttons do I have clicked on etc?
Any help would be much appreciated!
Thank you.
 
My belt is feeling a little tight. Which notch should I use? My tie is clashing with my shirt. Which color should I go with? Oh yea, and my shoes are uncomfortable. What size should I wear?

You see where I'm going with this? :D
 
Daisy said:
My belt is feeling a little tight. Which notch should I use? My tie is clashing with my shirt. Which color should I go with? Oh yea, and my shoes are uncomfortable. What size should I wear?

You see where I'm going with this? :D
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*High 5*

I looked online to see if I could find any info for myself but didn't come across much probably because I'm using a bunch of crap hence me asking.
 
There's not much to go on here as to the specifics of your question.
Do you have the manual, understand what does what? In other words how far back- where should we start?
 
mixsit said:
There's not much to go on here as to the specifics of your question.
Do you have the manual, understand what does what? In other words how far back- where should we start?
Click to expand...

Sorry, and no I have no manuals. I mean I know the basics but as far as the pre goes I'm clueless and trying to get the best from it, I know my mic is'nt great at all but it's all I have to work with right now.
 
Recording Vocals with one of those Fake tube pre"s I would have the "Drive" set at Zero, the Drive just adds Noise and distortion...I would set the gain so it doesn"t clip your sound card but is loud enough to hear.....
 
Well despite all the spitting of bile in regards to your recording chain - YES you can record good tracks with what you have. Half my bands songs used a cheap AKG dynamic through a Tubepre for the vocal tracks. ...and the vocals are what we get most complimented on.

Since nobody else here wants to help because you own crappy gear I guess I'll have to do it.

On your tubePre you'll want the PAD switch on. A common setting on mine is gain up to halfway and drive on 3/4. That may be too high for you. I have a different tube than the one it came with so my drive control works a bit different now.

There really isn't anyway to get rid of the hiss from this box so learn to live with it. Since you are doing Rap you may actually like the drive control pretty high. It does tend to thicken things up. The louder you hit it though the more chance it will overdrive and that you may not want.

Now, you really want to spend time practicing mic technique. Recording with a hyper or supercardioid mic is no fun at all. Trust, we were stuck with an AKG D890 for a very long time.
But learning what you can and cannot get away with on your mic will make most of the difference in your recordings.
 
Somnium7 said:
Well despite all the spitting of bile in regards to your recording chain - YES you can record good tracks with what you have. Half my bands songs used a cheap AKG dynamic through a Tubepre for the vocal tracks. ...and the vocals are what we get most complimented on.

Since nobody else here wants to help because you own crappy gear I guess I'll have to do it.

On your tubePre you'll want the PAD switch on. A common setting on mine is gain up to halfway and drive on 3/4. That may be too high for you. I have a different tube than the one it came with so my drive control works a bit different now.

There really isn't anyway to get rid of the hiss from this box so learn to live with it. Since you are doing Rap you may actually like the drive control pretty high. It does tend to thicken things up. The louder you hit it though the more chance it will overdrive and that you may not want.

Now, you really want to spend time practicing mic technique. Recording with a hyper or supercardioid mic is no fun at all. Trust, we were stuck with an AKG D890 for a very long time.
But learning what you can and cannot get away with on your mic will make most of the difference in your recordings.
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Good. Cool. Cool info.. The problem here though isn't the gear, it's fine. It's the question. All he has really said is 'they don't sound right', and the manual is found on-line in two min. 'Hiss, distortion, worng tone, wrong mix, wrong voice,,,,,, :rolleyes:
We could go on for days.. :D

ps. This is HomeRec. I do 'home rec. And we make with what we got. Damned right on far's that goes. :)
 
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No one said there was anything wrong with his gear.

It's just that what he's asking is very situation-dependent.

You can't even tell someone to engage their pad unless you know whether their input is -10 or +4 ... how loud his mic is ... or how loud he's belting out.

You need to experiement and learn the fucking gear. :D Unfortunately, that's the only answer.
 
Thank you for the help, sorry my questions were not more specific basically I'm clueless on everything. I've been told to look into getting a Joe Meek Three Q but until I can afford it I'm stuck with what I have. Really I was just asking whats a good setting to have my pre on. I will try the settings mentioned above tomorrow morning though and hopefully it works out. Again thank you for the help it's much appreciated!

Is a Three Q something worth getting for sure?
I hear for the price it's the best.
I'm actually watching a VC3Q on ebay for 30 dollars.
 
there's no point in upgrading your gear at this point

Unless there is something about it that is holding you back. Right now noise, distortion and bandwidth specs are not in that category
 
I wasn't getting things to sound right with the tube pre -- have gone through a bunch of gear upgrades, and now it's clear that my problem is... my voice :o

Experimentation is good.

oh, and your voice is probably better than mine :) - play with the controls and mic positioning
 
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Mister Lacey said:
Thank you for the help, sorry my questions were not more specific basically I'm clueless on everything. I've been told to look into getting a Joe Meek Three Q but until I can afford it I'm stuck with what I have. Really I was just asking whats a good setting to have my pre on. I will try the settings mentioned above tomorrow morning though and hopefully it works out. Again thank you for the help it's much appreciated!

Is a Three Q something worth getting for sure?
I hear for the price it's the best.
I'm actually watching a VC3Q on ebay for 30 dollars.
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Or consider just concentrating on getting a good clean signal and performance recorded and use software after to dial in and experiment. I couldn't tell for sure what options you have with the Tascam's software, but there's tons of plugins that can be had for cheap.
 
Mister Lacey said:
I was just asking whats a good setting to have my pre on.
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Set it to where you have a strong enough signal going in to your sound card / interface to record ... but not so strong that you wind up "clipping" / distorting the inputs of your mic pre or your sound card.

That setting will very likely be different for someone else than it is for you. That setting will also be different depending on the song, and how loud you are singing or rapping on that particular track. It will also change depending on what kind of mic you're using.

You following me?

:D
 
follow daisy's advice, the thing is, if changing the controls has an affect on the sound (not just on the volume) then you are operating outside of the optimal range of the mic pre
 
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