Am I on the right track?

T

tvanveen

New member
Oh look, I made a little pun....

I'm just starting to get my feet wet, and want to make sure I'm not making any glaring errors here.

I have an MR-8. I recorded a couple of tracks, then dumped the tracks to my pc. Opened up the wav file for each track in N-Track, did a little EQ-ing, panning and levels adjustments and made a stereo wav file which I burned to cd and could play on my stereo.

Yippee.

Ok, so #1, I'm wondering if this is a good workflow. #2, I'm wondering how I should upgrade my pc. I'm thinking my next purchase should be monitors..should I upgrade my soundcard too?

Last thing...when I mixed the song I tried to keep the levels as high as possible without red lining too much. When I play it back on the stereo it's not as loud as "normal" cd's. I didn't use any compression...I'm wondering if I had used a little compression to smooth out the peaks if I could have bumped the levels up a bit to get a louder overall mix.


Anything else I should be thinking about?

Thanks,

Tom
 
...

i'm not too sure about external gear so i don't know what you mean by dumping tracks into the pc. I just record directly into my multiracking software via my soundcard. I'm sure i will be corrected but either way proly works fine.

What sound card are you using and what kind of computer. Yeah i think monitors would probably be a good idea if your other gear is working for you. I mix with computer speakers and it is frustrating at times to bring my mixes to a CD player and find the levles are not right. this creates extra work.
 
Hey Tom, welcome to the BBS. You seem to be heading in the right direction, you're here right?
#1. Your workflow goes in the right direction for the recording and mixing but you're missing an end process they call mastering. There's a forum here for it and lots of good info there so read away.
#2. It's real hard to tell you if you should upgrade without knowing what gear you already have, where you are heading and what your budget is. A common look for purchasing new equipment is replacing your weakest link in your sound chain starting from the mics-->speakers. Look towards your future when buying and try not to buy stuff on the low cheaper end because you'll be replacing it down the road for sure. Read alot about what's available and when you get ready to purchase, toss out the idea here on the BBS and you'll get alot of respectable opinions to help you decide. G/L
 
minofifa - I use an MR-8, which is a digital portastudio. I recorded the basic tracks there and then copied them over to the pc for editing.

NYMorningstar - I though the part where I tweaked things in N-Track was called mastering?

Here's my basic setup -

SM-58 and/or Yamaha SM-58 clone into MR-8.
Dump tracks to PC with no name soundcard and no name speakers.
I have a Behrenger mixer on the way to use as a mic pre-amp and to record my band.

I'm wondering if I need a fancy soundcard if I'm not using it as an input? With this workflow it's just used for playback during mixdown.

Thanks for your responses.

Tom
 
You loose a lot of sound quality (not to mention time) by copying all your files over to your computer.

You want to try to minizime the times that the signal has to change from analog to digital. When you record it becomes a digital file, when you send it to your computer it becomes analog (in the cable) and when it enters your computer it becomes digital again. All this convertion reduces your sound quality.

In order of perference I would try the flash card first (because the transfer is the fastest) The disadvantage is that you always have to pull the card out to tranfer to your computer. The second option would be to get a soundcard that has S/PDIF so you can use the digital S/PDIF output on the MR-8. The last thing I would do it connect it the way you are doing it now (but it is the cheapest :))

The process you described is called mixing. Mastering is an entire different ball of wax. Mastering occures after you have mixed your songs. When you mixdown in n-track it makes one .wav file. The process of applying EQ, compression, etc to this track is mastering. While some people can come very close to a professional mastered sound at home, it takes someone with years of experience, very good monitors and a good sounding room to master a song to it's full potential
 
If you are recording your whole band and want to do it live or all at the same time then you may want to get a soundcard that has enough inputs to record each instrument seperately. You can get a Delta 1010lt for under $300 that has 10 ins and outs with features like 24-bit 96 kHz recording, zero latency monitoring and digital mixing.

You may also want to get yourself an outboard compressor/limiter or two for that mixer for the live situations. Again, there's all kinds of equipment you can get depending on your budget and specific needs so before you buy ask around here and get lots of experienced opinions and insight.
 
"The last thing I would do it connect it the way you are doing it now (but it is the cheapest )"

Actually, I dump directly from the card using a USB card reader. Unless I'm missing something, there's no a/d conversion.

Thanks for the clear explanation on the diff between mixing and mastering.

"If you are recording your whole band and want to do it live or all at the same time then you may want to get a soundcard that has enough inputs to record each instrument seperately."

Well, the band rehearses in one place, the pc is in another.

"You may also want to get yourself an outboard compressor/limiter or two for that mixer for the live situations"

I have one, but hadn't thought to use it in that situation.

Thanks for the info!
 
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