Computer/Behringer UB1202/Power Tracks

[souwalker]

Hello Everybody
It has been a long long time since I visited this BBS.....
My questions may be dumb or maybe obvious to the experienced here but what I am attempting to do is way over my head in terms of experience and termanology. Here goes:
We are 2 guitarist/vocals. We use Midi backing tracks for bass and drums. We have 2 x Boss ME50 Multi Effects Box, 2 x electric guitars and 2 x elec/acoustic guitars.
We'd like to record some of our music for family, friends and demo for further gigging purposes. The quality of the recording hope to be decent but need not be excellent.
Using Power Tracks Pro, we playback the midi backing tracks. At the moment we do not mind recording all the live stuffs into one audio track in PT.
I was advised by a shop assistant that we can use the above mixer to achieve our goals. Our 2 mics goes into the xlr connection. It was suggested that our 2 elec/accoustic guitars goes into the line in of the remaining 2 mic inputs because of the gain funtion. The ME50 has a combo phone/line out which we connect to the other stereo line ins but use the mono (L). This will avoid re-patching the guitar etc.
What I don't know what to do is how do I hook up to my soundcard, headphones (2 headphones) and most importantly able to monitor the backing tracks and all our live instruments (guitar/vocals) in our headphone while recording and have the computer speakers playing the backing tracks as well.
Would some body be kind enough to show me how we can achieve this with the above mixer? What goes in where...etc.
http://www.behringer.com/UB1202FX/index.cfm?lang=ENG
Many thanks
Patrick

 

[cawhite12]

You didn't mention if you had an audio interface or not. If you don't, I would suggest getting the M-Audio Delta 44. You could run the mics through the mixer then into 2 inputs of the delta, then run your guitars through the other 2. You could keep the midi in the computer and record the 4 inputs on top of the midi backing tracks already in Power Tracks. You might also need a small headphone amp to drive 2 sets of headphones. Sounds like mostly you need an audio interface to help you get the stuff into the computer for recording.

 

[souwalker]

Thanks for the reply.
I don't have an audio interface. Is one required? I can connect the mixer main out to the soundcard's line in.
Rgds
pat

 

[gecko zzed]

you can go straight from the mixer into your computer's soundcard via line in, as you suggest. You can then take the line out of your sound card, then feed that into an amp that can drive a set of headphones.

If you want to run more than one set of headphones, hook up an old cassette deck or similar to the amp and use the deck's headphone socket. Alternatively, and more satisfactorily, you can get a small headphone amp that will drive four or more sets. They're not expensive these days.

You don't necessarily need an interface, but using the computers sound card can give rise to annoying problems. The first is potentially poor quality recordings, and the second is latency when doing overdubs or otherwise trying to synch new stuff with old.

 

[guitar junkie]

if you are willing to throw a little money at this you could find a 4 channel interface that would have line ins for guitar and mic pre's for vocals... four channels seems to be about what you need... does your computer have firewire? that is getting to be cheaper and cheaper now....

if you could multi track it sure would be nicer when mixing...

just a thought, good luck to ya!