Mixer or Audio Buddy?

BillC15

BillC15

New member
From the time I started (which was no more than a year ago I believe) I had just ran my Marshall mg50dfx straight into my sound card and achieved results that honestly exceeded my expectations. But now it appears my expectations have increased. It started when I borrowed my friend's sm57, which I miked my amp with variable distances, put it through a rumble 100 bass amp (I guess you could call that my extremely ghetto preamp/mixer) which went to my card. And as expected half of every extremely thin recording was noise. This made me consider to invest in a decent preamp, but I'm starting out, very tight on cash, you've heard the same story thousands of times, because yes, I have searched through similar posts. So, I was considering this mixer probably off of ebay, http://www.behringer.com/802/index.cfm?lang=eng
because I'm also entertaining the idea of pairing up two sm57s for things such as miking the back of my cab as well as the speaker at the same time or even possibly to try out some overhead drum miking techniques. But, I have heard good things from M-audio and I'm thinking of settling for an audio buddy I'm sure you've all heard of because it suits my budget also. Will the audio buddy preamp treat an sm57 (or two) well, or is the behringer's preamp along with its panning and eq features a better value? I will say that I am slightly leaning towards the behringer but again, I'm only looking for a clean, as noiseless as possible recording on a tight budget, just like everyone else. Sorry for the enormous post. Hope all this background information wasn't useless.
 
Both the mixer and preamp you are considering are extreme budget units. Their performance will be roughly comparable in my opinion. If it were me I'd go more for whichever one had the features I needed, and less for considering the tone.
 
In that case, I would have to go with a mixer. But I was browsing through some forums a while a ago and someone recommended this mixer to someone with a similar dilemma: http://www.zzounds.com/a--2676837/item--YAMMG102C and if the sound/tone is cleaner, depending on how much better, I'm willing to dish out the extra cash. But again, I would probably look into getting one off ebay if possible. What do any of you think?
 
I do think there is a difference between budget gear, but I wouldn't buy either of these. I would save a little more for the MAudio DMP3. It is a tried and true budget preamp of very good quality.
 
I would definitely consider the dmp3, though it is a bit out of my budget. The only thing that I wish it had was a panning option, especially if I were to record drums with only two mics. That was the reason why I was leaning towards a mixer. But you and many others say the sound is nice and clear, which is my main concern, panning being number 2. Oh decisions, decisions.
 
You would do your panning in the DAW software anyway, wouldn't you? Just record as two separate mono tracks and pan them as you wish.

As far as the mixer, I'd take the Yamaha any day. I've had much better luck over the years with Yamaha gear than Behringer gear.
 
SonicAlbert said:
You would do your panning in the DAW software anyway, wouldn't you? Just record as two separate mono tracks and pan them as you wish.
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Now if I could do that, it would pretty much settle my decision to go and save up for a dmp3. But if this is possible with any DAW, how would I go about doing this if both mics go into the preamp, which goes into my sound card to be recognized as one track? In other words, how would I be able to separate them so that my DAW records them as two separate tracks instead of one from the single output of the preamp to the single line in of my sound card? Sorry if this is a dumb question with an obvious answer but I can't imagine how to do this if it is a common DAW function.
 
1st of all those little yamaha usb mixers are great at what they do, I used one forever.. 2nd, your line-in on your soundcard is a 2 track stereo line-in. On your mixer, pan 1 track 100% left and the other 100% right. Set up your project to record 2 mono tracks, one from line-in L, the other from line-in R. Then you have 2 mono tracks, the distinct L/R from the mixer. In your DAW, pan em how you like.

If you want a Yamaha, I suggest a MW series USB mixer, like the Yamaha MW10-C. You plug it into your USB port, it becomes a sound card, and all the audio goes over the USB link.. No messing with gains or anything. VERY easy, and a helluva lot cleaner sound than using a standard PC sound card..
 
That's an interesting idea. But what I was saying before was if I were to use the m-audio dmp3, which doesn't have the ability to pan- you have to do it with your DAW in that case. But my mixcraft 3, which is kinda crappy only allows you to arm one track at a time for recording as far as I know. But these usb mixers seem worth looking into, given the fact that my sound card is definitely not geared towards audio production and like you say, they're easy to use. I wish I had some sound samples of one. I'm just looking for a low noise preamp that allows you to pan separate tracks before the signal hits my computer. So far, that seems to me to fit that description.
 
If you can live with tracking 2 tracks at a time max, usb mixers are awesome. The yamaha mw ones are cheap and sound great. The pre's are plenty quiet, and capable of 24bit so you have way more than enough headroom. Plus you can run your PC games, winamp, everything thru it to your monitors, it's a great cheap little starter setup. When I had min I completely disabled my integrated sound card. Ez to use, works great, sounds great, the only down side is the 2 track max thing.
 
Thanks a lot, your suggestion seems to be the best fit for my situation. But out of curiosity, do you know why these Yamaha usb mixers only allow you to record two tracks at once while there are like 5 tracks in total?
 
BillC15 said:
Thanks a lot, your suggestion seems to be the best fit for my situation. But out of curiosity, do you know why these Yamaha usb mixers only allow you to record two tracks at once while there are like 5 tracks in total?
Click to expand...

Cuz it has 2 outs, L and R. It's a 10x2 mixer, meaning it has 10 ins and 2 outs. There's mixers in lots of practical configurations, 8x2, 16x2, 16x4, 24x4, 32x8, whatever. INSxOUTS is standard notation when describing a mixer. The Yamaha mw10c is 10x2, it takes your 10 ins, mixes them into 2 channels, that's what a mixer does.

If you want something that takes 8 ins and also has 8 outs, you want an interface. That will route all individual inputs to your daw in separate tracks, ie an 8 channel interface will allow you ro record 8 tracks at a time.
 
Sorry if I'm being a bit of a dumbass, and I know this thread has been going sorta off topic, but what is stopping me from using three separate channels for three separate mics at various points in the stereo field once if I wanted to? When recording to my comp, I'm assuming the usb is the only out.
 
If my understanding is correct, you can record as many sources as the mixer will allow, but they will be mixed down to stereo in the mixer. So what your computer will get is stereo only.
 
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