A couple NOOB ProFire 2626 questions

[Rancor12]

I have a ProFire 2626 running into my laptop for recording my band. (drums, 2 guitar, bass, 2 vocals).

Now, I was originally told that to properly set the mic gains, have someone play whatever the channel is mic'd to, for example a guitar, in a fashion that it would be played for a song, or maybe a little more aggressive. While thet're doing that, turn the gain up until its giving me a red and green light, then slowy turn it down until there are no more red lights, just green.

Is that right.

Secondly, the profire 2626 also comes with a digital on screen mixer that appears to do the same thing as the physical gain nobs, so do I need to use 1 or the other, or both...?

Lastly, the phantom 48+ voltage, that can be turned on for mics 1-4 or 5-8 speratley. Should I have both of these on, off, or is it based off of what mic is where?

I've had this gear for a couple of years but I'm just getting serious about recording.

 

[Johnka]

I'm also a newb with my Profire 2626, but I don't mess around with the M-audio mixer before recording. I adjust the gain nobs as you said, but everything else I post process in Logic. No complaints using this method so far.

 

[Bobbsy]

The knobs on the actual box are adjusting the analogue levels actually going into the interface before they're converted to digital format for recording in the computer. It's important to avoid any clipping at this stage (i.e. the red light) because there's no real way to get rid of it if you record it that way.

The control panel mixer can be used to set up monitoring mixes on the output of the 2626 for monitoring during the recording process. It doesn't affect your recording levels. See pages 16 and 17 in the manual.

One thing about the "turn it up until the red light comes on then back it off" method of setting up the analogue levels, if you do it one mic at a time, beware of what happens when the whole band is playing. For example, having the drummer just hitting individual sections of the kit to set up those mics can lead you to have the levels too high when he kicks in with the whole kit (pun intended). Similarly, if you set up the vocals "just right" by themselves, they can pick up a lot of stage wash when the guitar and bass start up.

Bob