Recording from Emu Planet Phatt

  • Thread starter Thread starter graham
  • Start date Start date
G

graham

New member
I'm not a professional, so please excuse me if this in layman's terms . . .

I've owned a Plant Phatt for a couple of years now and I've always had difficulty recording from it - playback to headphones is fine.

I'm using Cakewalk 9.0 on a PC, simply feeding the midi to Emu Planet Phatt and trying to record direct from the sound module.

When I use my (standard) JVC headphones the sound is crystal clear, but when I try to record (to 4-track, standard tape or MiniDisc), the bass rasps and the treble is muffled.

Even when I drop my recording levels significantly - I still get the problem. I've tried toning the bass down, but it doesn't seem to make a difference - I've also tried using the other outputs on tje Planet Phatt, but I get the same results.

Can you tell me what's causing this and if I can get round this with my current set-up?

If not - do I need to buy more equipment, and if so, what? Someone I work with suggested a DIN (i.e. microphone-type) lead, but I don't understand why that would make a difference

Thanks
 
I'm not familiar with Midi, but I have had a similar problem when hooking up devices that have an impedence mismatch.
 
First of all, what are you listening to your recording with? Are you using the same JVC headphones to playback the recording or are you listening through speakers? It could be a simple matter of your sequence sounding good through headphones and crappy through a certain set of speakers. The first thing you should do before you try any recording at all is to make sure your sequence sounds good through a decent set of speakers. If you are a newbie you probably don't own monitors, so if you don't just use quality speakers that you are very framilliar with. It's still a more accurate representation of your music than headphones give. Second, how are you recording onto your minidisk or 4 track? Is any Dolby Noise Reduction turned on? If it is, try recording and playing back with it off. Are you just going straight out of the line level outputs on the back of the Phatt into the recorder? Are you going from the headphone jack straight into the recorder? Do you have a preamp or mixing board of some sort in between the Phatt and the recorder? If I was using only a Planet Phatt and recorder with no go-between of any kind, here is what I would do: Listen to the sequence through the headphone jack and turn it up loud, but not so loud that distortion or hiss is introduced. With that volume setting on the Phatt, run a cable from the headphone out to the recorder and set the level on the recorder to a spot that keeps your level meter happy. Record that signal with no noise reduction or eq or any of that fun stuff and see what you get. On playback, also make sure that noise reduction, eq, etc are turned off.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top