Nilman13 said:
1. How can we plug in the other two mics? Two for stereo recording and three for drums maybe? I've tried using a headphone splitter but it dosn't seem to be effective.
Welcome to the nightmare, Nilman. It's not too late to turn around; you can escape now to the bliss of enjoying music through the simple pleasure of creating it. Or, if you're stupidly brave, you can continue on down the dark road of narcissisitic home recording from wheich there is no excape, and which will eat your time and money like locusts on a defensless farm field and leave you with far less pleasure than promised
To answer your first question, there are two basic ways to handle that one. The first would be with a mixer to live mix your mics down to stereo and then record the stereo signal thorugh the sound card (or via USB or Firewire if you get a good enough mixer that has that ouutput option.)
The second would be to get a multi-I/O interface for your computer that has several mic preamps built into it (e.g. Tascam FW-1084, Presonus Firepod, etc.) that connects to your PC via Firewire interface. Then you'd be able to record all channels simultaneously and mix them on your computer with Fruity (or better, with the software that'll most likely come with your interface).
As Dani alluded to, you could also combine the two by having a mixer and a multi-channel interface, which many do. But I might recommend walking before running, getting one at a time (probably the interface) and getting acclimated to the environment and figuring out if you want to jump in the rest of the way after that.
Nilman13 said:
2. Any way to record an
acoustic guitar without having to plug the guitar into an amp? The mic dosnt pick up something that quiet.
There is no problem recording an acoustic with a mic if one has the proper mic and preamp. in fact, this is the standard way of doing it. With your current mics and soundcard your results are going to be of limited quality, but the way to do it is to a) make sure the mic is plugged into the "Mic In" and not the "Line In", and b) go in your sound card mixer software and make sure you have the input level in the Mic In channel boosted enough (but not too high.)
If that still doesn't work for you, then wait for the interface described above, you'll be cooking with gas then.
Nilman13 said:
3. Do you suggest any other ways (simple or complex, but relatively cheap) that we could improve on our setup? And why doing such things would make it better?
Other than the above-mentioned stuff, read and study on the whole subject. You and your boys should go spend an afternoon down at your local Border's book store and hit the music section. You'll find at least a half-dozen excellent books on recording, mixing and mastering music, from home PC setups to the big Nashville studios. Take a handfull of those books over to the store's cafe, order a few sodas and kick back, passing these books to one another as you find neat ideas and things to know.
G.
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