Newbie, Recording to laptop or desktop.....

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computergod

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Hello Everyone.

I am in a Jazz Band and we would love to record using my pc or laptop. Both which are custom built by me with plenty of space and top quality cards. I have Sound Forge 5.0 Full Retail.

We have a little bit of equipment and I have tried importing it to my computer but have had little and no luck. We have a board with levels. We have 4 mics plugged into it. That isnt what I want to put into the board. We have two seperate mics we have as general pickup. Those two I want to record from. They are both XLR and I used a converter to convert each one from XLR to 1/4 inch then a 1/4 to an 1/8 which nicely fits into any sound card. Now I'm not sure if all of that converting means that I lose the sound somewhere inside??????

Now I tried it in both the line-in and the microphone jacks. I tried un-muting each one and watching what infact happened. Nothing happened, I couldn't input it into my computer. I even checked out Sound Forge settings and saw there was no reason for this. I can plug in a 1/8 comp. mic and I have no problem. This has led me to believe that all the connections lose the sound or the fact that maybe these mics need to be powered?

Anyone with any clue what to do will be an incredible help and if anyone could that would be great. If you tell me something and it works, I will send you a copy of either sibelius, finale or sound forge, your choice.

Thank You

DR
 
You mics won't work in the -line in- without a pre. Have you checked to see if the input for the mics is a stereo input? There are alot of soundcards that require a 1/8" stereo input. Narrow down the problem. You can see if the XLR to 1/4" is working plugging into your external mixer. There is probably also an internal mixer in your software you want to check to see if it using the correct source.
 
Also check that the mics work in the desk when phantom power is turned off; if not they are condensers, and you are pretty much out of luck if you want to connect them directly to a 1/8' input of a soundcard.
 
I'm sorry but How do you build your own laptop?
I would really like to know.
 
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