How to hear new tracks and old tracks together while recording

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paulmbrady@ear

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Greetings. I record with a mackie CFX MKII mixer into my computer on audacity program medium. My songs come out slighly out of sink and I fall out of time because I cant hear in my headphones the new track IM recording in my headphones. I hear the old track in the headphones and have to pull the headphones half way off my ear to hear the new part IM trying to record, say a lead part onto the rthym. Is some way to hook things up or maybe a button on my mixer IM using. Any help here is appreciated. I thank you for any help. Paul wa state.
 
AFAICT Paul that mixer does not have USB capability and therefore you must I think be using the computer's On Board Soundcard?
These are not good and one of their worst features is a high level of "latency" this is the delay you experience in hearing a signal from the PC compared to when it went in.

In fact, even if the mixer was equipped with a USB converter it is unlikely it would be good enough for your purpose. They are designed mostly to grab a stereo scratch recording at a live gig.

You need a "proper" Audio Interface. Could be used stand alone or combined with the mixer. For very low latency, and excellent qualities otherwise, you will not find a better AI IMHO than the Native Instruments KA6 for anything like the same money or much more.

Equipped with the KA6 and the Mackie you could record 4 audio tracks at once together with MIDI data should the latter interest you.

Dave.
 
Don't you have some kind of auxiliary bus that lets you pull the signal directly off your input channel? If so, you ought to be able to patch it back into your stereo bus and blend it with the playback from your DAW. No latency. That kind of flexibility is the point of a mixer.
 
Thanks

Robus said:
Don't you have some kind of auxiliary bus that lets you pull the signal directly off your input channel? If so, you ought to be able to patch it back into your stereo bus and blend it with the playback from your DAW. No latency. That kind of flexibility is the point of a mixer.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. Ill try experiencing with the aux outs next time I record a song. Blessings.
 
Thanks for the tip. I should buy a better interface someday. Latency. It could be a latency problem.Ill have to keep trying to try different things. Again. Thanks.
 
Thanks again for the response. IM going to try to maybe see if aux outs will help.
 
This shouldn't be too complicated. That looks like a capable mixer. There's going to be a way to monitor what is going into the mixer from the guitar mic. You are getting latency because you are monitoring the recorded guitar part coming back out from your DAW. What you want to do is monitor the input on your mixer. And you want to blend that with the other recorded tracks--minus the guitar--coming into your mixer from the DAW. You want that blend in your headset.

I guarantee you there's a simple way to do that. Dig into your manual and learn your mixer and you will find it.
 
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