Need help.. SM57 recording to computer

  • Thread starter Thread starter austinm08
  • Start date Start date
austinm08

austinm08

the pigeon knows the way.
This is what I bought today:

-Shure SM57 mic

-6ft "XLR fem-XLR male" microphone cord (brand is Rapco Intl.)

-MIT-435 Mic Transformer, XLR Female LO-Z to 1/4" Male HI-Z (brand is Hosa)
page: http://www.hosatech.com/hosa/products/mit_transformers.html

-Mono 1/4" Female to Mono 3.5mm (1/8") Male (brand is Hosa)
page: http://www.hosatech.com/hosa/products/GMP-113.html

Now, I tried plugging this straight into the sound card, into the pink one with the pic of a mic by it.

I can't get the computer to recognize it, because in the control panel under the hardware it's nowhere to be found, and I tried recording but nothing was picked up.

My question is, is there something I'm missing? Do I need some kind of mixer? Or something that can take my mic and put it into the computer through USB (which I don't want to go that route, because I heard USB is slow and can't transfer the data quickly enough) or PCI?
 
Yeah you need some kind of preamp to boost the signal of the mic. Recording straight into your computer's soundcard will not sound good at all. A good cheap preamp people around here have recommended is the M-Audio AudioBuddy. It's really simple and if you only need one input for your SM57 then it seems like it's just what your looking for. You won't need all those transformers either. Just Plug the SM57 into the AudioBuddy, then out to your computer. Really simple and you'll still get some good quality recordings.
 
Well, you should be able to get the mic enabled through windows control panel, but as tricked pointed out it will not sound good for most applications. The reason is the cheap preamps on most sound cards. You want instead to get a real preamp and go from it to the line-in of the sound card.
 
Alright, thanks. I got it to make noise.. but you have to yell loud for it to have any sound at all, and it was barely any noise.. so I'll try to find a preamp of some sort, maybe the Audiobuddy.
 
You can adjust the levels by clicking on the volume icon in your system tray, then go to options > properties. Then click the recording radial. Make sure you have mic and line in selected. I used to do this for a while. The recordings didn't sound good at all. It was noisy, lacked fidelity, and the DC offset was off.

If you plan on investing anymore money into your studio I would suggest you save for a M-audio DMP3. You can get it for $130 on www.pcconnection.com . A 57/DMP3 combo is something that you can use for the life of your studio.
 
Thanks donger. I already checked the levels.. they are completely up.

I'll look into the DMP3.
 
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