First DIY recording session.....not so good.

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prometheuswire

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I am trying to record my band with Cubase VST, an 8 channel mixer and a Delta 44 (4in, 4out) audio card. Here are our problems:

1.) We are limited to recording at my friends office. We tried recording in different rooms but were unhappy. The drums sound uninteresting and there was to much rattling (from desks and stuff). We were thinking about putting the drums in the middle of the wharehouse to get some more resonance and power.

2.) We are recording the bass and guitar with mikes (SM58s). The base levels going into Cubase (taking the mike through a XLR to 1/4" convertor) were way low. I heard that dynamic vocal mikes are bad to use for bass. Is there any cheap alternative? Should we just try boosting the bass during mixdown/

Thanks
Courtney
 
you might get an interesting sound in a warehouse, but i'd think it would be a VERY live space.

don't know what kind of office this is ... maybe you could rig up a little semi-isolated booth out of cubicles or something?
 
Try and plug your bass directly to the mixer. Preferably through a good Direct Box (about 25$ and up).
What kind of a mixer do you use?

Oren
 
I am using a Behringer (I don't know what model). We tried taking the base mike into the mixer and liked it a lot more, however, I still don't understand why the bass needs a signal boost. Is it the nature of the instrument?

What is a direct box used for?

Thanks for the reply
Courtney
 
All instruments and mics need a preamp to boost the signal. The XLR inputs on your behringer have preamps in them. Most 1/4' inputs do not unless they are specifically designed for an instrument to be plugged directly into them.

A direct box converts an instrument level signal to mic level signal so you can plug in an instrument into a mic preamp XLR input.

PS - I sent you an email.
 
Yep. That's the nature of the instrument. It has to do with imepdance matching (Plenty written about the subject, so just do a quick search).
What I ment was just plugging your bass through a direct box (DI) into the mixer. No amp in the chain.

From what I remember, it was very difficult to get a usable signal from a bass directly into the Behringer without a DI, but with a cheap Behringer DI box (DI100 - 39$. Now they have an even cheaper double DI for 29$) you can get a pretty nice tone (depending on your instrument of course)>

Other DI boxes to consider are SansAmp, Coutryman, Whirlwind. Just check any half decent music store.

Oren
 
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