Please help! Just bought first mic..

[Bryan Medina]

Sigh...I did a nice reply to Bryan on my phone but I see it was eaten and disappeared without a trace!

On Cubase, ecc is right that you need to spend a bit of time in the tutorials. Most DAWs require you to manually set up the drivers you want to use and the input/outputs of your chosen interface (in your case the Alesis). You then have to route the two Alesis channels to your chosen tracks on Cubase. I don't have any Cubase experience but it has a very good reputation. It'll be worth taking time to head up the learning curve.

On the mic, assuming you have it on a stand rather than hand holding while you record, try putting it a bit above or below your mouth so it's angled at about 45 degrees when it points at your mouth from about six inches away. That should help--then if you set your levels as ecc suggests some compression on the vocal should sort things out.

I'll definitely look into setting up Cubase with a bit more patience. By the way what do you mean by compression? Sorry I know it's a basic question. Is compression like adjusting the voice sound? I'm definitely interested in doing so because when I lower gain on the Alesis I can barely hear my voice on the recording.

 

[ecc83]

Thank you I will definitely try dialing the gain back on the Alesis interface. I noticed I used it all the way up and I was peaking at red level 0db very much. The only thing is that I think that if I lower the Gain on the interface I will barely hear myself on the recording. I'm guessing that's where the DAW comes in handy right? How would I now raise my voice volume after lowering gain on the interface? Would I raise the gain on the audacity software?

Gahhh! "We" forget the basics! Have you got Windows sounds turned off? You must because you see those clangs, bangs and whoops come out at near 0dBFS and so you are conditioned to listening to computer stuff AT those levels. Do this...

Record a minute or so of speech and try to keep the level as close to -18dBFS as you can. Now, play that back and adjust your MONITORING chain, headphones? Speakers? to give you back THAT level. You have now, very roughly "calibrated" your system*.

In audio work, recording, fault tracing, it is almost always the case that you start at the OUTPUT. Get that right then work back.

But yes, post recording (jargon word "tracking") you can set the playback levels to anything up to "0" but don't squash the living daylights out of everything!

*And I know the spending never ends but a very basic $30 C weighted sound level meter is a very good idea as is a Goggle to find "Calibrating Studio Monitors" . Well! You wouldn't want it eeeasy would you?

Dave.

 

[Bobbsy]

I'll definitely look into setting up Cubase with a bit more patience. By the way what do you mean by compression? Sorry I know it's a basic question. Is compression like adjusting the voice sound? I'm definitely interested in doing so because when I lower gain on the Alesis I can barely hear my voice on the recording.

As ecc says, you can crank up you playback MONITORING (either the headphone knob or the output to speakers) on the Alesis as loud as you want to get a reasonable listening level. Don't tweak levels in Cubase except to control the sound of your mix though.

Compression is an effect that limits the dynamic range of your recording. At the simplest, you tell it to stop anything above a certain level to be limited to that level. (There are lots of other adjustments to make it sound good.) Once you've done that, you can turn everything up ("make up gain") and voila, the difference between your quiet notes and loud ones isn't as dramatic. Use it carefully though...two much can such the life out of your music.