Another "I need gear" thread.

  • Thread starter Thread starter demensia
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demensia

demensia

www.lukemacneil.com
Alright here it goes.

Im getting sick of making minimum payments on my guitar center card and running back to buy the cheapest hunk of shit I can get my hands on because it has LEDs on it.

I'm really dissapointed in this Behringer 802A Mixer I Just had to buy because it was $80.00... It left me with absolutly NO room to expand.

So fine people of the HomeRecording BBS, my question to you is "What the hell should I buy Next that would make the greatest impact on the quality of my sound".

1.) A new mixer (currently behringer 802a)
2.) A new direct box (currently whirlwind imp2)
3.) A new sound card (currently audigy)
4.) A new preamp (currently presonus bluetube)

I was debating in my head either a delta 44 or some mid-range mackie mixer.. what should I do? taxes are comming back soon :)
 
no one here can offer even remotely valuable advice without knowing what other equipment you already have and what your intentions are.
and even then we can't help too much.

spend the money on drugs, amphetemines, so that you can stay up all night long recording and using what you currently have and hone your skills! that's my goal.
 
Don't buy gear for the sake of buying gear.....

...buy gear because you have a problem to solve and lack the gear to do it...

So what studio problem is it that you need to solve?
 
Also, you have a money management problem. If you're getting a tax refund, it means you lent money to the gov't at 0% interest. Not a good idea.

Stop lending the gov't free money and you'll have more money in YOUR pocket (where it belongs since you're the one who earned it in the first place), so that when you feel the need to acquire a piece of gear (following the Bear's advice of course) you won't have to settle for the cheapest you can find.
 
thanks for the advice guys.. although I like the tax refund at this stage in my life. Right now the main problem I have is a singer that doesnt know how to sing.

I also can't seem to use my virtualizer through an aux send/return on my mixer... it works, but not very well.. thats a problem.

The input to my sound card is one more my aux sends, through a guitar cable with a cheap 1/8 inch adapter... which I believe is creating noise.
 
New gear:
replace singer
Custom wire your own wires, eliminates noise
Record clean and un-effected. Add effects via software
 
demensia

detail point you may have thought of - an effects send doesn't have to come back through the return; put it into one of the non pre-amped stereo channels and you'll have more control over it. Worth mentioning as it might eliminate one source of trouble with these famously dodgy mixers.

Are you using the pre send to the effect and post to the PC, or vice versa?
 
demensia said:
thanks for the advice guys.. although I like the tax refund at this stage in my life. Right now the main problem I have is a singer that doesnt know how to sing.

I also can't seem to use my virtualizer through an aux send/return on my mixer... it works, but not very well.. thats a problem.

The input to my sound card is one more my aux sends, through a guitar cable with a cheap 1/8 inch adapter... which I believe is creating noise.
Click to expand...

In the meantime, try using a stereo RCA>1/8" cable from the 2-Track out on your mixer to your line in on the sound card. The adapter and the guitar cable could be seriously compromising your sound.
 
oh, good call ecs Never even thought of that.

Garry: Yeah I had the effects unit comming back through the send.. I dont know how to respond to your bost because I dont know what your talking about.

Even: another good call. Naturally after I went out and bought $100 worth of monster cable to do it all up.. What do I need to make the cables? And he's the only singer I can find.. I'm sure he'll get good if he fucking practices... slacker just wants to be jon davis, but its all good, I start singing lessons myself on wed, figured I'll at least check it out.. I just play mostly acoustic Jerry Cantrell sounding stuff, and I figure.. that guy probably didnt know how to sing either, he probably just took some lessons and practiced.

DrMurphPR: Yeah, I do have a money managment problem.. But thats for a different forum :)
 
I forgot I had already had this conversation with Tex.. I went out and bought a 6 foot RCA and plugged it in and then realized that wont solve my problem...

Heres the earlier conversation..

The problem is two fold. Not enough flexibility with the mixer and soundcard. Getting a better mixer will definately solve the monitoring problem but a better sound card without the better mixer may not. You could probably make the behringer work by using Aux sends but that has disadvantages also.

Are you sure your mixer doesn't have channel inserts on the back (I looked it up and they don't mention it so I assume not)? If it does than the Delta44 will put you in business. If not then I would get a newer mixer first if you want to do 4 tracks at once and have some flexibility with monitoring. Something like a Soundcraft M4 or Mackie 1202 would work great. you would still have to submix your tracks on the mixer since you would only have 2 inputs on the soundcard but the overall quality and flexibility would be greater.

Obviously the better mixer and the Delta44 would give you the monitoring control and 4 individual tracks recorded at once so that should be the ultimate goal.

One quick and dirty fix to avoid the feedback loop with what you have would be to use the Pre Fader Aux send as your monitor feed. This way you keep the channel with the prerecorded tracks out of the main mix by only assigning it to the Aux send with the other live tracks and listen to that. The downside is you would need an external headphone amp connected to the Aux output to drive your headphones.


-- Sorry I wasted your time on something that was already discussed. Looks like I need a new mixer... Ill look into the two that tex suggested.. Any other options?


Thanks.
 
All you can do is evaluate the signal chain. Right now it's singer to mic to behringer mixer or Blue Tube to sound card to hard drive. BTW, what's the mic? The weakest link in the chain right now is the singer. After that, that Behringer looks like it. The blue tube isn't the world's greatest pre, but it beats a Behringer mixer. You haven't mentioned the room at all, but it's a major factor. Look at your singer (the source) and the room, because that's where you can get the most improvement for the least bucks. Use the Blue Tube straight to the soundcard and use the Behringer for a headphone amp.
You've got problems that gear won't necessarily fix. Less is more. Simply do less better with the shortest possible signal chain, and the smallest possible number of tracks.-Richie
 
Good Call, Good Call.

I work in framingham.
That's kind of trippy.
 
Sorry demensia - I'll try to make it clearer. Other people are better qualified than me to talk about what new kit you can buy, but you should perhaps take that slowly, and in the meantime....

I've had an 802a for a couple of years, and although it's very limited there are some shortcut workarounds and also ways of avoiding its worst bits, like the pre amps.

In my earlier post I was talking about the effects return sockets, next to the send sockets on the top. Do not plug the lead bringing the signal back from your virtualiser into them. Why? Two reasons.

First is, FX returns are put through some kind of normalising pre amp thingy - the right hand knob of the two above the LED controls this, and the left hand one is a fader controlling its level in the main mix. Avoid this chain; it's a mess and I suspect might be what causes one of your problems.

Second is, apart from the gain and level controls I just mentioned, you've got no control over the signal back from your Virtualiser; it just goes straight into the main mix. Instead, plug the jack into one of the normal inputs, preferably channel 5-6 or 7-8, which are line level and avoid the pre amps. This gives you much more choice about what to do with it - including using an aux send to get it into your soundcard. Which brings me on to...

The thing I don't understand is why the aux send to your sound card is giving you problems, unless there's a hardware fault somewhere. I find that using the pre fade send to my recorder a track at a time works fine - make sure all the other pre send faders are turned right down and use the fader on your selected track to get maximum signal without clipping.

A couple of other points. First, the 2 track out on this mixer is very weak. The control room outs are better, and have their own fader.

Second, you can put a mic through the Blue Tube and then into a line level input on the mixer (unless you put it straight into the souncard, which is better but you can't use the virtualiser like
that) and again avoid the Behringer pre amps.

Hope this helps.
 
I still dont quite understand how that would work.
Check it out, this is how the mixer is hooked up as of now.

1-4 Inputs - instuments and mics
5/6 input - Input from Soundcard
Send 1 - Output to Soundcard
CTRL Room out- To Monitors
Main Out - To 4 track (for monitoring purposes)

This leaves me with:

Aux Send 2
Aux Returns 1 and 2
7/8 Input
Tape in
Tape out

all unused.

What I dont understand is if I plug aux send 2 to the virtualizer, and stereo out from the virtualizer to input 7/8, how will I be able to record the effect on any individual track?


sorry for all the questions but mixers confuse the hell out of me.
thanks for your input.
 
demensia

I was going to say "By sending channel 7/8 to the soundcard for recording as you would any other track. In fact this is the only way you can record it on the 802A; if you plug the Virtualiser into the fx return input you would have to record the whole mix. "

However just before hitting submitI realised that this would only give you a mono recording and I guess the whole point of the virualiser is that it's in stereo. Therefore the answer lies (for recording the processed signal) in using the fact that you can get a different mix on the Control Room output than you do on the main mix, so you'd use just one of those stereo outs to send to your soundcard and the other one for monitoring.

If you want to pm me with more details (how many instruments/mics, which ones you want to apply the effect to, whether you want to record both dry and processed tracks so you can mix them on your PC, and the order in which you want to record the various tracks), I can give you a more detailed suggestion. Probably a bit too tedious to clog up the BBS with.

By the way the Behringer manual is quite good and sets out explicitly the signal paths through the mixer; if you spend some time getting to grips with this you can be a bit more creative than just using the sockets for things they are labelled for.

Please don't hesitate to pm me if I can help more.

Garry
 
Cool, Ill pm you when I get out of work...
I dont see why the board couldnt use such information however.
I'm sure many a newbie like me could use such knowledge.
 
I'm pretty much a newbie in most of this, just happen to know this mixer very well. Just seems arrogant somehow, posting away.

If I give you a reply that works and if you think others can use it then it could be posted.
 
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