Mbox- Pro-tools Set up Help

[aegean]

This site looks great- I couldn't find answers to my two questions on searching the site though. I've just started using Mbox with iMac OSX for voice recording only. When I open up a new track in pro-tools and select stereo it only records on one channel. Before I was using it in the mono option but the audio playback sounded stripped of any quality. I've checked the wires and setup and it is all in stereo? Could anyone help?

Also, when recording the voice it comes through the headphones kind of 'doubled up'. Is this a pro-tools 'thing' because you don't get it with soundforge and cool edit pro? Does anyone know how to normalize the sound coming back because its very off putting when reading a script.

I still have faith in the mbox - but need the sound quality to be much better.

 

[bennychico11]

First off, you want to leave the track in mono. Generally you record things like a voice in mono with one microphone. Think about it...a voice is an instrument that can make one sound at a time in one place. Unless the microphone says it's a stereo microphone you need to leave it in mono. That's just a general rule. And you said it was stripped of any quality in mono...what do you mean by that? Is the stereo one sounding any better besides the "coming back in one channel" thing?? You could also just take the stereo recording and remove the good channel from the track and move it to a mono track.
As far as it coming back doubled up...are you saying it's too loud? Not a latency issue right? Try just turning down the headphone volume if that's what you mean. Hope some of this helps.

 

[aegean]

mbox / pro-tools

Thanks for this. The issue with the doubling up is like a chorus on the voice which I noticed on a friends pro-tools a few years ago and now I have the same thing on my one. Its just not the usual mic through headphone sound. (Headphone volume is just normal)

When I bounce the mono voice to Aif format it is saving two files left and separate right. This could have something to do with the quality not sounding great. If its mono shouldn't it just save one file?

Pro tools does seem much more complicated than the other recording software.

Any suggestions though would be welcome! Thanks

 

[bennychico11]

You might be having a latency problem when recording, but it's hard for me to be sure without hearing it. One of the option menus up top has a command called "Zero Latency". look for that and see if it works. This is a nice feature on the Mbox too that you don't find on many hardware units.

As far as it bouncing down to two files....I dont have the software right in front of me but I think the options you have are mono, stereo and stereo interleaved. You want to choose Stereo interleaved. This merges both files together into one stereo file. When it's in separte L and R mono files most CD burning programs like Roxio or ITunes will recognize that as 2 stereo files. So if you add the L file it will automatiaclly add the R file. I know this is true on a Mac, but never tried CD creator programs on PC. Go ahead and just bounce down to stereo interleaved and it should sound fine.
I hope some of this can help you.

 

[BrettB]

Damn Benny, you are always faster than me

You're right again: Stereo Interleaved is the way to go. You will have your wav or aif file as one and you can just drag it into your Cd Creator.

The doubled up headphone thingy is definitely a latency issue: just lower your buffer size in the playback engine window.