Hi! Beginner needs wisdom on Titanium HD

[Macellomatik]

Hello!
I'm new to the forum and I really wanted to thank you all for the interesting infos I've found here!

I'm a complete beginner with home recording but I have some experience with editing and mixing.
I'm writing because I need help clarifying some aspects of home recording related to the "infamous" Titanium HD.

Here is my case:

I am a singer, guitarist and jack of all trades in a metal band, and we are planning to record our music at home.
Our band already worked with some studios and we are planning this new method to reduce the production costs.
What we want to do is digitally compose the drums (DAW + plugins) and then record the guitars and bass with a DI Box, so that we can edit them as "clean" and then reamp them with an audio engineer.
Also, we will not be doing any mixing and mastering because we are trying to achieve a professional level and I'm not good enough yet

Now, being a gamer in my freetime, I recently bought a new PC with a SB X-Fi Titanium HD, that I hoped would be good for both entertainment and recording.... but, as stated in other threads here and elsewhere, it has a few problems, one of all the lack of an XLR interface.
Still, strictly looking at the specs, the SB is a good board and before spending more money I wanted to understand why it is considered so bad (I did read other threads but my doubts remain).

Now my doubt:

We have a mixer (Behringer XENYX X1204USB) that I could use to route the balanced signal from the DI Box to the line-in (RCAs) of my SB.
The SB should have an input rate of 96KHz at 24 bits and that should be good for professional standards (or maybe not ?).
In any case, other audio interfaces I have seen in the same price range record at the same rate, which I think is good enough as it will all probably be downsampled to 16bit/44.1KHz in the end.
So, if I consider 24bit/96KHz to be good, use the mixer to bypass the lack of an interface and use the SB line-in to avoid any Mic-in related issues, is there something more I have to worry about that will make my recording non-professional (apart from my skills obviously )?
Or maybe something I have overlooked ?


Thanks for your help!

 

[DM60]

Take you mixer connect to computer, you will only get two channel as the USB is stereo, bypass the SB all together. Check to see if Behringer has ASIO drivers for that unit to improve performance. Route all of the sound back through the mixer. At this point, with what you have, you should be set. If you want more direct channel inputs, you will have to look for a different interface, but your Behringer will get you started.

 

[mjbphotos]

The problem being that the Xenyx is going to add some noise to your signal.

 

[Bobbsy]

Hello!

The SB should have an input rate of 96KHz at 24 bits and that should be good for professional standards (or maybe not ?).
In any case, other audio interfaces I have seen in the same price range record at the same rate, which I think is good enough as it will all probably be downsampled to 16bit/44.1KHz in the end.
So, if I consider 24bit/96KHz to be good, use the mixer to bypass the lack of an interface and use the SB line-in to avoid any Mic-in related issues, is there something more I have to worry about that will make my recording non-professional (apart from my skills obviously )?
Or maybe something I have overlooked ?


Thanks for your help!

Except this is the same lie Creative have been peddling about their Soundblaster products since time began. Despite what they say, if you dig a bit more deeply they DON'T properly work at 24 bit/96 kHz. Their sample rate is locked at 48kHz and ONLY 48kHz. If you tell it to convert at a higher sample rate (or, indeed, at 44.1 for CD working) it converts at 48 kHz and then does an internal conversion of the sampled files to the rate you specify.

On top of that, if you check the so-called specs you'll find they're actually pretty useless. Just as an example, one line is "Signal to Noise ratio 122dB". Unless this specifies input or output, levels, and a slew of other stuff, it's a meaningless number.

The unfortunate fact for you is that the Titanium, like all SB cards is designed for gaming and watching videos--the engineering has gone into the playback side with the input nothing more than a low quality afterthought.

 

[Macellomatik]

Thanks for the replies,

@DM60: Yes, connecting with USB from mixer to pc is possible (I have no channel problem as I would use only one at a time) but my mixer digitalizes only at 16bit/48kHz. I had no idea there were drivers for usb mixers, thanks for the heads-up !

@mjbphotos: Did not think about that, guess I'll have to measure the noise and see if it's acceptable or not.

@Bobbsy: Mmmm... I must admit I had an issue yesterday with my rate being locked at 48 but I thought it was a setting problem, if it is as you say the SB would be completely useless for my purpose.

Better run a few more tests then.
Thanks again!