Recording through mic input while listening to PC audio through headphones?

R

Robby Suavé

New member
My goal is to be able to hear myself play guitar from my amp through headphones and record that guitar to my computer. I also want to be able to hear the backing track coming from my computer with the headphones. It's kind of embarrassing, but I'm using all these cables and splitters to try to make this work, but my problem is that my computer is recording the backing track that is playing for some reason in addition to the guitar.

This seems like it should be easy enough to do, but I'm not having any luck. Can someone help me out?
 
You may have something like "What you hear" selected as your record source. If what you hear in the headphones is your guitar and the backing track, that's what it records. Try selecting the mic input as the record source in the Windows audio control panel.

Better yet, get yourself a USB audio interface designed for what you're trying to do.
 
Thanks for the reply. I don't have that set as my record source. It is indeed "FrontMic." Any other ideas?

An yeah, I know I should get an audio interface, but I don't have the extra money for that right now. I do have one, but it doesn't work as is because I guess it needs a phantom power supply which I wasn't aware of when I bought it.
 
Robby Suavé said:
Thanks for the reply. I don't have that set as my record source. It is indeed "FrontMic." Any other ideas?
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I don't have any at the moment. A detailed description of your cables and splitters might give some clue.

Robby Suavé said:
An yeah, I know I should get an audio interface, but I don't have the extra money for that right now. I do have one, but it doesn't work as is because I guess it needs a phantom power supply which I wasn't aware of when I bought it.
Click to expand...

If you mean the power supply which powers the interface, then it should be relatively affordable to replace. You just need to match the specs and connector.
 
Alright. I have two splitters: one in the headphone jack of the amp and one in my headphones.

Amp splitter: one cable goes to the mic jack of my PC, and the other goes to a splitter in my headphones.
Headphone splitter: one cable goes to speaker jack of my PC, and the other goes to the headphone splitter

For the audio interface, I don't think it's like an AC adapter that I need. From what I understand, I'd need to buy a big phantom power box and connect it to it. I don't know. I bought it on eBay a few years ago, and when it didn't seem to be working, I asked the seller about it, and he said I needed phantom power.

Edit: I actually just hooked it up. It's the M-Audio Fast Track, and I remembered the exact problem now. It records, but it's very very quiet. The humming sound that I'm getting is about 100x louder than the guitar sound. I've tried plugging my guitar straight into the interface, and I've tried running a cable from my amp into the interface with basically the same result. As I look at the thing again though, there doesn't seem to be any port for a power supply of any kind, so I'm not sure what to think now. Then again, I have next to no idea what those phantom power supplies really do.
 
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Robby Suavé said:
Amp splitter: one cable goes to the mic jack of my PC, and the other goes to a splitter in my headphones.
Headphone splitter: one cable goes to speaker jack of my PC, and the other goes to the headphone splitter
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It looks to me like there's a path from the speaker output back to the mic input through your splitters.

You could ditch the splitters and use your recording software to monitor the inputs, but that will probably result in too much latency.

You could get a small mixer to solve your routing problem, but that costs money and you're still limited to the quality of the stock sound card. At that point you might as well spend the money on an interface.

Your Fast Track seems to have a problem. It may be as simple as a bad solder joint on the jack, but it could be more. Even something simple could be more expensive to fix than the cost of a replacement.
 
I have tried monitoring through recording software, and there is too much latency.

I do have a powered mixer. The problem there is I need to go through my amp, and for some reason I can't easily get my amp to play through the mixer speakers. My amp only has a 1/8" out jack, and I've tried adapters and many different kinds of cables with different size plugs, and nothing is flawless. I have to have the cable only halfway plugged into the mixer for it to make a good connection. It's weird. It doesn't matter which input jack I use on my mixer, and I don't have issues with any other amp.

I spent quite a bit on the Fast Track a while back, even though it was used. I'm pretty sure there is an issue with it, and I feel dumb for not knowing better when I got it. But like I said, the eBay seller told me it needed a phantom power supply. Last night I looked up some youtube videos, and that doesn't seem to be the case. So it's basically a paper weight, unfortunately.

I've been looking at one of those PreSonus Fireboxes. I might try to find a used one. (I tried to post a link to it, but it won't let me since I have fewer than 10 posts.)
 
A powered mixer probably doesn't have the routing features needed to solve your problem. You need to be able to send inputs to a record output and mix them with the playback to another output for monitoring while recording.

The 1/8" output on your amp is probably stereo and the inputs on your powered mixer are mono. If they are balanced mono inputs, and the mixer's output is mono (typical for many powered mixers) then the problem you describe makes sense. Probably an adapter that splits the single 1/8" stereo connector to a pair of 1/4" mono connectors, one left and one right, would solve that problem. But that's not really your fundamental problem, that a stock sound card doesn't have the features you need to make recording efficient.
 
mixsit said:
Perhaps that would be one to easily to check as the cause too- do a test record without the amp out connection to the phones side.
Click to expand...

That is what is happening, but to me, it's strange that it works that way.

So if I got an audio interface, maybe another Fast Track, for example, would my setup work with that? Would I be able to connect headphones to it and be able to hear what's coming from my amp and my PC through my headphones in addition to being able to record only the amp output to my PC?
 
Robby Suavé said:
That is what is happening, but to me, it's strange that it works that way.

So if I got an audio interface, maybe another Fast Track, for example, would my setup work with that? Would I be able to connect headphones to it and be able to hear what's coming from my amp and my PC through my headphones in addition to being able to record only the amp output to my PC?
Click to expand...

That's exactly what they're designed to do.
 
Robby Suavé said:
Alright. I have two splitters: one in the headphone jack of the amp and one in my headphones.

Amp splitter: one cable goes to the mic jack of my PC, and the other goes to a splitter in my headphones.
Headphone splitter: one cable goes to speaker jack of my PC, and the other goes to the headphone splitter

For the audio interface, I don't think it's like an AC adapter that I need. From what I understand, I'd need to buy a big phantom power box and connect it to it. I don't know. I bought it on eBay a few years ago, and when it didn't seem to be working, I asked the seller about it, and he said I needed phantom power.

Edit: I actually just hooked it up. It's the M-Audio Fast Track, and I remembered the exact problem now. It records, but it's very very quiet. The humming sound that I'm getting is about 100x louder than the guitar sound. I've tried plugging my guitar straight into the interface, and I've tried running a cable from my amp into the interface with basically the same result. As I look at the thing again though, there doesn't seem to be any port for a power supply of any kind, so I'm not sure what to think now. Then again, I have next to no idea what those phantom power supplies really do.
Click to expand...


You don't need to buy anything else, you just need to get your Fast Track working.

A few misconceptions:

1 - The Fast Track doesn't need an external power supply, it's a USB device so will draw all of its power from your computer when you connect them via a USB cable
2 - The Fast Track doesn't need Phantom Power - it PROVIDES Phantom Power for those microphones that need it - usually condensers


Exactly which model of FT have you got? There are several different versions available
 
Ah. I see I'm getting different sides here. I probably have the first model. It doesn't have a model number anywhere. If I was allowed to, I'd post a link to it, but if you search Google for "maudio fast track," the first result should be a PDF of the user manual for it.
 
Hi again. I'm back with an Alesis Multimix 8 USB FX mixer! Pretty cool, but I'm still able able to come up with a good way to hear my guitar (which is plugged into the mixer) as well as my PC audio through my headphones (which are plugged into the mixer). There are many inputs on the mixer, and I think I've tried all of them, but any source I plug into the mixer will get recorded. Is there a way around this?

I know I've sort of asked this before already, but I have a more standard recording set up now.
 
Robby Suavé said:
Hi again. I'm back with an Alesis Multimix 8 USB FX mixer! Pretty cool, but I'm still able able to come up with a good way to hear my guitar (which is plugged into the mixer) as well as my PC audio through my headphones (which are plugged into the mixer). There are many inputs on the mixer, and I think I've tried all of them, but any source I plug into the mixer will get recorded. Is there a way around this?

I know I've sort of asked this before already, but I have a more standard recording set up now.
Click to expand...

How is your audio getting from the computer to the mixer - through the USB connection? That's how it should be done. You insert the audio tracks you want to play along with into your DAW.
 
Sorry. I should have mentioned that. Yes, the mixer is connected to my computer via USB. How can I get the audio coming from my PC into my mixer and therefore into my headphones without recording the PC audio? Like, I'll have the drum track playing on my computer, so I want to hear that through my headphones which are connected to my mixer, but when I'm recording, I don't want those drums to be recorded.
 
Ah. That works. I think I'm pretty good with computers and whatever, but I've never thought about a USB cable sending and receiving audio streams at the same time. I also had to change my PC audio out settings to "USB Audio Codec." Anyway, so thanks. :)
 
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