Please help me...

[mholder]

I didn't think this was going to be easy, but I never thought it would be so difficult to record good solo acoustic sound.

This is my basic setup, and for now I have to make it work:

One Shure SM48 and one Shure SM57.
One rosewood Guild D-50 with a preamp pickup.
One 30w acoustic amp.
One Tascam 414 4-track that I use as a mixing input board only.
a Mac G4 running Pro Tools LE.

Right now, I am running both mics into the left and right XLR inputs on the mixer, and one line out of the amp into one channel of the mixer.
RCA out of the mixer into a stereo 1/8" jack of the computer.
Then, recording stereo channels into Pro Tools.

My problem is that I cannot get the levels right. Considering that the mixer has individual channel level controls, high and low tone controls and a master level control, plus Pro Tools has individual track levels.

Either the guitar is too loud, or the vocals clipping and distorted, or the whole thing is too quiet once I bring everything down in mixing.

Please someone help me without saying I need a $300 mic or any additional hardware. Just tell me what you would do with my room and equipment.

 

[Fed]

Ok here is what I would do with your setup.

I would consider it a two track recorder as in two tracks at a time. Plug two things into the Tascam and pan one all the way right and another all the way left.

Now I don't know Pro tools LE but in my program I can record stereo,mono right or left chanels of a stereo input. The input on your computer I think is stereo. So arm two tracks in PT one for left chanel of your input and another for the right. Don't record them stereo. You can pan things later. You should be able to
overdub two track at a time as much as you want (well 12 times for PT LE)

As for levels, arm the tracks and play or sing the loudest part in the song and watch the meter on your computer. Make sure it doesn't go over 0 (zero) or it will distort.

Hope it helps

 

[RWhite]

When you say amp, do you mean guitar amp? If so, I would forget the amp, just try micing the guitar with your SM-57 from about 12" away. Farther if you really play loud.