having trouble properly setting up vocal mics for a live recording in home studio

[franknzapa]

Help!! My bandmates and I are trying to get a good quality recording down and are having a time with it. Heres the setup:
Saffire Pro24 w/Octopre MKII connected to Macbook Pro via thunderbolt (firewire)
Guitar - amp mic'd (no direct input)
Bass -Direct input (but bass amp is pushing out sound into the room)
Drums - Kick, Snare, Toms and overhead (condenser) direct input

Mics are Shure DMK57-52, Shure 58 vocals and MXL 840 condensers

For the vocals, I have the 2 vocal mics going into the Pro24 and two lines out into a Mackie mixer that feeds 2 monitors (not headphones)

for software, I'm using Mixcontrol from Focusrite (for initial level setting) and Reaper (latest ver).

The problem is the vocal mics cut out or pop regularly. the rest of the stuff sounds pretty good and/or can easily be balanced within the DAW. Any suggestions as to why the vocal mics are cutting in and out at random times? thanks

 

[mjbphotos]

Are you recording all the tracks at one time, or multi-tracking the vocals after? If you're doing it all at one time, you may not have adequate RAM, or have too much 'background software' running.

 

[Bobbsy]

Similar thought to mjbphotos. Are you by any chance trying to add real time effects to the vocal mics? If so, it may be too much for your computer to handle.

 

[DSPDiva]

Another issue could be the sync of your devices. Make sure the saffire is running at the same sample rate as your session. This was a common problem I used to help students with a lot.

 

[c7sus]

You also might try increasing buffers in ASIO panel.

 

[DSPDiva]

For recording, your buffer size needs to be as low as possible. You need a higher buffer for mixing to be able to handle the plugins. But stay low when it comes to recording so you don't have latency.

 

[tailored suit]

There's an article on latency at planetoftunes .com that could be of use. Type latency into the search box on the home page