need help building up my home pc studio.

[ShaggySteveo]

Hey everyone.

I'm pretty new to home recording, I've been doing it for about 5 months. I began by just plugging a microphone into my crappy soundblaster live! card so I could record myself practicing guitar, but it wasn't long before the song writing bug hit and I began recording bits and pieces of songs.

I'm now trying to build a decent home recording studio over the course of the next several months, and I'm just not sure what I need next. Here's what I've done so far..

I'm using a dynamic Shure PG57 (not SM!) microphone for recording. I record vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and electric bass through it. I'm using Kristal Audio Engine as my software, and it more than meets my needs.

I've just purchased and installed an AudioTrak Maya 1010 audio interface. as my first major purchase. The Maya 1010 has 8 analog audio ins, 8 analog audio outs, 2 built-in 15dB mic preamps, and 2 headphone outputs, as well as some MIDI and SPDIF outlets I have no need of at this time. The card comes with all of these interfaces on a breakout box where everything is 1/4" jacks.

I don't have any seperate mixers yet, or any preamps. I also don't have any monitors. For output, all I have is a beat up pair of old headphones and some $20 PC speakers that use standard 1/8" mini jacks.

With the new Maya sound card, I did a test recording and was pretty happy with the new sound quality of the card and the PG57 mike give me. With out any real mixing, i just recording and saved what file, then burned it to a CD, and it was light years better than than anything I'd done before. Near CD-quality in my newbie estimation.

My current BIG problem is that despite being able to use my new audio interface to record, I can't playback anything using the new soundcard. I've plugged my $20 computer speakers into the breakout box by what of a mini to 1/4" adapter, and configured Windows and the Maya to be my primary play back device but I get no sound at all from the system. I've also tried it with the beatup head phone, but I just get no playback. When I switch Windows Audio setup over to the little soundblaster that I still have installed in the system, by headphones and speakers work.

I've triple checked my PC configuration, and I don't think there is a Windows problem or a software problem here (I'm a computer network specialist so I'm pretty good at realizing when there is a software or driver issue involved) The control panel software for the Maya shows that when sounds should be playing from the PC, the output channels are active like data is passing through them.

I think I just don't have it hooked up correctly. I've read about active monitors and references headphones and i am wondering if I must use that in order to get sound output from my new soundcard?

If that is the case, then it looks like the next thing I'll be buying is a set of active monitors and reference headphones. I am also wondering, if the monitors take RCA connectors as inputs, what kind of cable do I use to go from the RCA on the monitors to the 1/4" jacks on the Maya Breakout box?

I am not looking to build a $5000 home studio that will rival a professional studio, but I do want to build a decent setup that I can record songs solo at a good quality that I could later take to the studio, or distrubute on CD as indie quality.

Any advice or help to get me pointed in the right direction would be awesome!!!

 

[daav]

Check the manual for the audio card and the recording software. Usually there is a (software) control panel for the card that will let you route output on the card and give you some meters so you can see that there is a signal going to such and such output (typic ally the 1st (left) and 2nd (right) output. The headphone jhack is probabaly the only stereo out (other than digital maybe).
In your software, you probabaly need to tell it which audio card output to route the output of the software through. A device setup or something similiar. You may need to specify a bus as an output (you send the tracks out to the bus) and then tell the bus to go to your 1 and 2 output of the card (left and right again). For your speakers you would probabaly need a radio shack or equivalant 2 - 1/4 inch mono to 1 eighth inch stereo adaptor to take the two audo card outputs and combine them into a jack for those speakers. But don't do that, use that money to put toward some decent entry level monitors. I am not even getting into reccomoineding those (because i know little). But for about $200-$250 you can get at least usable studio monitors (not hi fi speakers) like the wharfedales (i have a pair of these and they sound great to me).

Good luck,
Dave