Advice Please - More Bass in the headphones

  • Thread starter Thread starter zbert
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zbert

zbert

In the swamps of Jersey
There's got to be an easy answer to this one, I just know it.....
Last night we were recording my band live. Here is the set up. We are using an Alesis Studio 24 board into a Tascam DA38 DTRS machine. We are using a Samson headphone amp. Channels 1-3 are drums pro 25 on kick and a pair of 603s overhead. The keyboard when directly out the keyboard to the Alesis board. We put a SM57 in front of the gutiar amp and put a sleeping bag over the whole thing to keep down the bleed. We put our vocal mics into our Mackie board and then back into 2 channels of the Alesis. 8 live tracks. Through the headphones all this was great. Now the problem child. At first we ran the bass signal from the back of the bass players Eden head. It has an XLR out. Lot's of clipping with not much in the phones. Next we plugged the bass directly into the Alesis board. Nice signal to tape but very little to the headphones. So, what do we need to plug the bass into to boost his signal so we can hear him in the headphones like everyone else. As always thanks for any advice. BTW this was our first attempt at everyone live and other than the lack of bass it worked rather well.
 
Are you plugging the bass into a channel with a preamp? That should give you more than enough gain. If the cable run is more than 20ft you might want to use a DI (Direct Box) in between the bass and mixer and plug the DI output into a mic preamp on the mixer.

If you use the direct outs of the amp did you plug them into a line level input? They shouldn't clip that way but amp direct outs can be a little finicky.

Otherwise you might want to get an instrument level pre or a modeler like the Bass Pod and plug that into a line level input.
 
Its an Eden Head so Im assuming you came out of a built in DI in the back of the head.. on an XLR cable.

This is your preferred method.

If there is no level OUTPUT adjustment on the head.. then plug the xlr into a MIC pre on your alesis board..and use your trim knob (mic/line gain) to get out of clip.

I dont know how you are running to your headphone amp.. but you COULD run a line from our AUX SENDS on your board into it. If you do this.. you will have a LOT of control over how much of each instr. (incl. Bass) you send to the phones.

btw, otherwise you setup looks good. Though I dont understand why your Mackie board is even involved.

xoxo

ps.. Tex you are SO high. He should NOT replace an EDEN head with a bass pod.!! :)
 
A simpler alternative... you're monitring on headphones. What do you expect, headphones are always a bit bass light.

Alternatively, as above make sure the signal from the XLR out is boosted as I dont think mics outs/XLR outs are at line level.
 
Thanks for some good ideas. We'll take some extra time and play with the DI out of the back of Eden head. Just to have one I'm also going to buy a decent preamp for mic or instrument. As for the Mackie board what we did was use this for 4 vocal mics. Did a nice mix for each song ie: whoever was singing lead, and sub mixed that down to 2 tracks. Anything that did not track well can be overdubbed later. We were really trying to do a complete live vibe with this recording. I have all this equipment in racks so it can be used for doing "live" recordings on the road. Looks to be a good market in this area for mobile recording. I already have a concert band session and a church group booked. Should be fun.
Thanks Again
Tom
 
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