Need help with recording troubles :(

[xifakex]

Hey guys my names Jim.

I'm having a bit of trouble. Im a drummer, and im looking to do some covers for youtube to help with getting endorsements and a fan base and such! Well, Im in a band, and we have a GVDaudio Power Mixer BM-8800. I figured I could bring it home with our CAD mic set, plug them in, direct the sound into my laptop, and record.... Heh, not so easy. Ive been in the studio before, and ive been to shows, so i know what the innitial sound should be like, even before EQ and such. I've had good sound from these mics before and I've used them for recording elsewhere, but now trying to do it at home, I'm getting terrible sound. It sounds like im going through a terrible mic in the room. Im also getting this crappy phaser effect sound type deal even with the effects turned off on the mixer. It sounds worse than home level... i could probably do better with one mic. Im just wondering since im new to this if theres anything I could be missing. My laptop is pretty damn new. An HP 2008 model to be exact. Its killing me that i'm getting such crappy sound and cant fix it...

Any tips or anything that I might be missing or doing wrong here. Or maybe I still dont have good enough of equipment? Im clueless, lol.

Thanks to anyone who helps me!!!

 

[Bristol Posse]

Bad Room!

Either your getting standing waves that build up and massively over emphasize the "Mud" frequencies or they're cancelling out and leaving everything sounding thin and wimpy.

Only fix is room treatment!

Phase effects:
Sounds like a phaser because it is in effect a phaser. The mic placement is putting the sound out of phase (sound hits the mics at different times (Fractionally) due to different placement whether it be bleed into individual drum mics or the diffence between close mics and room mics and overheads. This can put the signals out of phase with each other leading to phase cancellation or over emphasis of areas where waves are summing or wierd "phaser" like effects.

Mess around with the mic placement until it sounds right and the phase issues go away

 

[The Cancers]

Are you taking the outs from the back of that powered mixer straight into your computer's soundcard?

That seems like it could cause some damage.

It ain't easy to get great sounds with the stock soundcard in any computer. It's possible, but their A/D conversion is meant for gaming/telephone over internet, not for high quality recording.
Bristol is probably right about what's causing your phasing sound, but I doubt just changing the mic positions is gonna fix all your problems.

Maybe start with just one mic, and work on getting great sounding recordings using just that. Then move it up to the whole kit.

 

[gecko zzed]

While stock soundcards are not great for duplex recording, they can do a reasonable job at just straight recording through a line in, and if you are going out of a mixer at line-level, you should get something that you can bear to listen to.

The phasing and other noise issues the OP describes could come from mike placement and the room, but they could also arise if the OP is monitoring with speakers while recording. That would cause more serious phasing effects.

Try recording one drum with one mike and using headphones to monitor this. See what results you get.

 

[xifakex]

Hey guys, thanks for the responses.
Um, well, I also direct plugged an acoustic guitar into the mixer and I was still getting that funny phaser effect. And I was also getting the same quality of sound as I was with the drums. I believe it might just be the sound card.. I did the test with one drum the first time, even at different placements in my room, also with different tunings and still the same effects... Maybe if I upload a sound file of the sound I'm getting, it'll help you guys better determine the main problem(s). I'll upload it here in a few minutes!

P.S. - Could the room really effect the sound THAT bad???

 

[xifakex]

Here is the sound file of what i'm getting right now.

This is with two hours of adjusting and playing with settings and everything.

http://drop.io/eqpqwmm/asset/test-quality-mp3

 

[Bristol Posse]

P.S. - Could the room really effect the sound THAT bad???

Ask those top studio guys if they spent tens of thousand on room treatments for the fun of it

Really it can make that much of a difference. Probably the single biggest factor between a home recording and a studio recording is the sound treatment quality of the live recording room and the treatment in the listening/mixing room so you can acurately here what is being mixed without having to second guess how much of you bass or loack there of is due to the room cancelling or emphasising certain frequencies.

It's also the least glamorous aspect and requires no black boxes with flashing lights and cables and reviews in tape op and that lack of sex appeal seems to be why people in home environments seem to ignore it over buying a new preamp/mic or something which then gives them more gain and accurate sound capture to further emphasize the shortcomings of the recording/mixing environment

 

[Bristol Posse]

Could be a windows sound set up problem too

Sometimes if you have it setup to "record what you hear" Its recording both the incoming signal as well as the playback. this could cause phasing issues.

Check the sound card settings in the control pannel in windows

same thing could be happening in the mixer too if you have any kind of headphone mix that is also inadvertantly being sent out to the USB connection

 

[xifakex]

@Bristol

Thank you so much!!! The windows settings fixed all the problems!!! im getting great sound now!!!

Thanks to everyone else that helped as well! it was greatly appreciated!


I will be staying active on this great forum!!!