H C S! - Mute/Headphones

[dvessels]

HCS stands for "here comes stupid" (that would be me).

What do most people do when using their (Windows) PC for recording vocals? Since the ambient noise all has to go and I don't have sound barriers in my basement "studio", it is frustrating to hit mute and it turns off the headphones as well. I know this sounds overly simplistic, but what do most people do to "mute" but allow the singer to hear through the headphones? Are cordless headphones okay or do they introduce any kind of audio interference? Is there a way to set it up to make several sets of headphones available?

TY, TY, TY!!
DV

 

[Massive Master]

(A) If you have ambient noise, without room treatments you're pretty much stuck with it. That's just physics.

(B) I don't understand the whole "mute" thing - Assuming you're recording digtially, just edit out what you can during the mix.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Run some cables up the stairs and put the vocalist in the kitchen...or the PC temporarily in the kitchen and the vocalist in the basement if that works better with your family members. Or...I have been in situations where the starwell to the basement actually had excellent room reverb and have purposely recorded vocals in the stairway.

As far as the headphones, yes there are some relatively inespensive "headphone distribution amplifiers". These are basically little boxes usually in the $50 - $80 range that allow you to plug 3-5 headhones into it with seperate volume controls for each headphone. Use this box with some headphone extension cables ($8 a pop for those from Radio Shack) and you should be set. There are several companies that make decent inespensive distribution amps. The one I use is the RA-53 from Rolls; it controls 5 headphones for about $70.

G.