cheating multitrack with a live value card?????

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girvan

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Hi.

I m running Cool Edit Pro on a PII 400, 128Mb of ram. I have a Sound Blaster Live Value Card. What I am trying to do is this:

I went to radio shack and bought a 1/8 stereo tip. I took 2 female XLRs and created a cable that Y's these 3 together.
I am running the 2 XLRs out of the mains of an Inkel 12 channel board into my card 1/8 stereo line in. I want to be able to have to mics panned hard L and R on the board and run them into my machine then in CEP arm 2 tracks and have the 2 sources record onto seperate channels. In theory it works. Can it be done successfully or do I have to fork out $$ for a better card. I just want to record drums with 2 mics. One to capture the overall and another on the kick.

Thanks for your replies in advance.
Scott.
 
Yes, in fact this an every day sort of thing for those of us with consumer grade soundcards.

You need to pan one mic hard left and the other mic hard right, then make sure you set cool edit to record a stereo track.

The resulting stereo track will have one mic on the left channel and the other on the right. Now you need to split the stereo track to two mono tracks, which should be an easy function within CEP.

Some multitracking applications like n-Track allow you to record directly to two mono tracks from one stereo input. CEP might have a similar feature; you'll have to dig in the documentation.

It sounds like you have everything you need to do this...are you having problems or have you not yet tried?

Slackmaster 2000
 
First off thanks for the reply.

Well last night I soldered a cable with hopes that it would work. When it didn't I figured it was my cable but also thought I'd post the question about whether or not it was possible.

As far as the cable goes I have 2 XLR females Ying into a 1/8 jack. I took the hot(pin 2) from each XLR and soldered 1 to the left of the 1/8 and the other to the right.Then I twisted the grounds from both XLR together and soldered it to the ground on the 1/8. Finally I simply snipped the 2 other lines(pin1) from the XLRs and didn't solder them anywhere. I'm no wiring expert so some advice would be greatly appreciated.

One other thing. If I had 2 sound cards in my PC could I in fact repeat this procedure to it and allow 4 simultaneous mics to be recorded. Say send each mic to a sub group on my mixer then a pair to one card and a pair to the other. I think it should work. It would allow me to mic the whole kit and possibly get a more controlled recording.

Whew, ramble on, ramble on.
Thanks for your help.
Scott.
 
Somebody else will have to help you with the actual wiring (or go buy a cable).... I don't mean to insult you, but make sure you're pluggin into the Line Input on your soundcard and not the Mic Input. This is a common mistake. Also, do you have a continuity checker (common on multimeters)? I would recommend buying a cheap multimeter as it can prove invaluable to quickly testing cables for shorts or breaks.

As far as the two soundcards go...well it's an idea. The problem is that each card will be running its own internal clock, meaning that you will almost certainly run into synch problems. So it'd be a matter of just trying it and hoping you get lucky. Try using two of the exact same card. You might also search the web for info on this... I recently found a site with hacked drivers to use two Ensoniq AudioPCI cards together for recording.

Two SB Live Value cards would be what? $120 total or so? For under $300 you can get a 4 in 4 out 24bit! card from GadgetLabs. Used you can often find 8in/out 24 bit gadgetlab cards for just a bit over $300. These cards also come with breakout boxes which makes plugging in very easy. Visit http://www.gadgetlabs.com/wavepro.php .... (P.S. the reason I recommend gadgetlabs without owning one is that many people here have them, PLUS they are one of very few cards to have NT/2000 drivers which is very important to me)

Slackmaster 2000
 
Well, thanks again.

About 5 minutes after I posted my last 'post' I went to Radio Shack and bought a proper cable. It all works great.
As far as getting a better card goes i'm all for it and I hope to save some $ for one soon (whatever I can sneak from the pamper fund). I'm in Canada so everything is a bit more but I can get a Gina for about $350 here. The Gadget Labs stuff is very interesting though. I have seen and read about it before. the only reason I mention using 2 cards is cuz my brother has a PC with a sound blaster card in it that is sitting idle and I could borrow it for a while. I think I'll try it out for kicks anyway but I do understand the clock issue.

'till the next problem arises.
thanks slackmaster.
scott.
 
I don't think you can run two SB Lives in the same box unless one of them uses the APS drivers. It seems the regular drivers cannot correctly communicate with more than one card. Check out

http://listen.to/sblive

for more info.

-AlChuck
 
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