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The Zoom H6 has at least 4 XLR mic inputs with phantom power available at 12, 24 or 48 volts, and a monitor mixer feature. Might be possible to arm a track in the Zoom to record, set levels for the mic and monitor the signal. You'd need a cable or suitable adapters to get from the mini jack...

Nice track. There's an obvious lack of brightness. Not sure how intentional that is, or how it compares to the source. It gives the track a sort of dated vibe for sure. Given the track, it actually sounds kind of cool. What tape speed were you running? I'm also curious about what a similar...

A microphone doesn't know or care what it's capturing, more or less. Some mics need more careful attention or protection from sudden air blasts. Ribbon mics especially, large condensers with thin diaphragm skins perhaps. The inside of a kick drum is a hostile enviornment that way. A lot of...

Interesting. I'm not sure what Jack White would say to that. If you can't get something to distort maybe you're not trying hard enough. Of course the overdrive characteristics of a variety of different gear are likely to be different. Even when we're not trying to overdrive anything there can...

I know. :) I still think you get what you pay for. I wouldn't hold Teac to the same standard as API or something. Honestly the preamp is one of the last things that might warrant an upgrade. The monitoring chain, microphone, mic placement and room can all have a bigger wholesale effect on...

It absolutely makes sense to try or rent the gear if you can before spending the big money. Reaper is very popular as a DAW. It's a big step up from Audacity. The demo is free and fully functional. The cost is very low compared to similar software. You probably also already have Garage Band...

At some point in the journey of learning to record, using a high quality preamp can be a big help to a small degree. The type of recording you're trying to do with acoustic instruments might be able to be improved in other ways. We would have to know more of your situation. Type of microphone...

"Baking" is making the audio crunchy from either tracking too hot or compressing the life out of it to make it loud. It's added distortion that you can't get rid of if the tracks were printed or rendered that way. If you have tracks that were recorded a little bit too low, turning them up in...

Given 2 files of the same length in time and same bit depth, eg. 24/48 and 24/96, the one sampled at 96k will be twice the size of the one at 48k. Computer horsepower keeps improving, but once you mix a session with a lot of tracks and a lot of plugin processing going on, the 96k file has twice...

I prefer to track vocals without headphones if I can. There's something about sticking an SM7 in front of the monitors that I really like. There's a tiny bit of bleed, but whatever. Last time I tracked vocals was on someone elses session and I used headphones. Eh, what are you gonna do, you...

The easiest way to tell what's going to cancel and filter, whether using headphones or monitor speakers, is sum the left and right channels to mono and listen. If you don't, you don't know what you're missing. It becomes more important as the phase coherency and stereo imaging become more...

There are a number of software products like Waves NX and Abbey Road Studio 3 that simulate room acoustics and crossfeed. How well they work to overcome the physical limitations of normal headphone listening? I haven't used any of them so I don't know. Do You Mix On Headphones? Take Your...

In the Andertons video I posted they were demoing a brand new Boss "Personal Amplification System" thing which is basically a bluetooth guitar amp built into a set of cans. If you don't like the native lack of room you normally get with phones, you can turn on the room simulator and adjust the...

Any idea what sample rate you were using with the Line 6? I'm just asking because it seemed like you were at 96k with the Scarlett. Wondering if backing that down to 44.1 or 48 might have an effect on the static. 96k sampling makes huge files and chews resources a lot faster. Maybe the glitch is...

Basically, sort of. So we need this thing called "headroom" over the +4 analog average line level as a place for the peaks to sit. If you clip (distort) the analog side of your signal through your mic preamp or converters before it gets to digital, that distortion gets baked in. Even if the...

Yeah, the center scale on that fader is dBFS. Once you're in the computer it's not dBu or dBV anymore. dBFS means decibels, full scale. It's how we read digital signals after they're converted. Beyond zero there is nothing so all hell breaks loose and you get harsh digital clipping. (This is why...

Gain staging 101: If the 6i6 is like the unit I've seen, the ring around the preamp gain control is the clip indicator. It should light up green when there's signal and red when you clip. Are you seeing it turn red? If so, that means you're exceeding 0 dBFS. Reaper is showing you dBFS. It...

There's some kind of static thing happening. Other than that it sounds like a fairly clean guitar. What level is Reaper showing you on input?

20 Hz to 20 kHz is generally considered to be the range of human hearing. This is frequency range, not dynamic range. Means we can't hear frequencies lower than 20 cycles per second or higher than 20,000 cycles per second. To the best of my knowledge, the Avalon unit is a channel strip without...