Recording vocals while listening to track

  • Thread starter Thread starter oldgreywhistle
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oldgreywhistle

New member
Hi
I have the use of my band's 12 ch mixer - Soundcraft efx12 - and my laptop. On my laptop I have loads of backing tracks. I would like to sing along to a backing track and record vocals on a separate track, while hearing my vocals and track in my earphones. Is this possible with the gear I have? I have been getting frustrated with distortion, delay etc. So hopefully someone on the forum can help.
I have been load a track on Cool edit pro 10 and arming track 2 for vocals but it doesn't seem to be working out.
 
Nice mixer, but won't really help you recording on a computer. What you need is an audio interface. Read the sticky'ed threads at the top of this forum on mixers and computer recording.
 
mjbphotos said:
Nice mixer, but won't really help you recording on a computer. What you need is an audio interface. Read the sticky'ed threads at the top of this forum on mixers and computer recording.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply,
I have looked but I can't see what a small audio interface has that a mixing desk doesn't. There must be a way to use a mixing desk for recording only vocals? My problem seems to be that I can't monitor track and vocals at the same time. How would an audio interface change this?
cheers
 
oldgreywhistle said:
Thanks for the reply,
I have looked but I can't see what a small audio interface has that a mixing desk doesn't. There must be a way to use a mixing desk for recording only vocals? My problem seems to be that I can't monitor track and vocals at the same time. How would an audio interface change this?
cheers
Click to expand...

An audio interface is designed for exactly what you want to do. It allows duplex recording, i.e. to hear a backing track while you are recording a separate track along with it.

An additional and significant benefit is that it bypasses your computer's soundcard. These are notorious for not delivering acceptable results in recording scenarios such as you describe.
 
Thanks to both of you. I guess I am in the market for an audio interface!
 
If you get something like a Behringer UCA202 or Edirol U1-A1 off eBay, you could connect the mixer output to to the RCA input of the UCA202 and then into the computer.

And for listening to the track, you can just set the playback device to your PC's onboard soundcard through the volume icon in the system tray.

Monitoring you voice is easy if you find the option in your software
 
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