Recording Vocals

H

hollywoodending

New member
I recently just finished setting up my home studio, and it's working great for recording instruments. However, I've run into a snag about recording vocals. How do I get all the sound to go to the headphones and not the monitors for vocal tracking? I'm using an m-audio audiophile 192 soundcard.
 
the way I see it, I could run the output of the soundcard to the mixer and listen to the headphones from there, but I'd rather not reconfigure my whole set up. I'm looking for an ideal way to get the output from the sound card to a pair of headphones and not the monitors.
 
hollywoodending said:
the way I see it, I could run the output of the soundcard to the mixer and listen to the headphones from there, but I'd rather not reconfigure my whole set up. I'm looking for an ideal way to get the output from the sound card to a pair of headphones and not the monitors.
Click to expand...

Reconfigure your setup once. Change it so that your sound card is hooked up to the channel inserts on your mixer. That way, the preamps on your board (or other inputs) feed into your audio card, and the output of your audio card goes back out through your mixer. Generally speaking, the inserts are a 1/4" stereo connector, and either tip is a send and ring is return or vice-versa, depending on your board.

The only disadvantage to this setup is that you can't use headphones to monitor using the mixer's headphone output unless your computer is on and record is enabled (unless you unplug the insert plug). Otherwise, this is probably the best way to hook things up.
 
dgatwood said:
The only disadvantage to this setup is that you can't use headphones to monitor using the mixer's headphone output unless your computer is on and record is enabled (unless you unplug the insert plug). Otherwise, this is probably the best way to hook things up.
Click to expand...


if you use a TS plug instead of a TRS plug in the insert of the mixer, and only insert the plug half way...you can still monitor throught your board...
 
I just run my soundcard outputs to a headphone amp that has a mute button for the monitors. The outputs from the headphone amp go on throught the amp to the monitors. It works great cuz I can mute the main monitors by the press of a button on the headphone amp, the Presonus HP4.
 
thajeremy said:
if you use a TS plug instead of a TRS plug in the insert of the mixer, and only insert the plug half way...you can still monitor throught your board...
Click to expand...

Yeah, but then you aren't getting the return through your board, so you can't monitor playback through the board at all, and thus, that config doesn't solve the problem of needing to be able to mute the monitors. With a TRS send/receive setup, you just drop your master faders and you're done.

Of course, if the board has effects sends and receives, you could use those to bring sound back in from the audio interface. It's probably more trouble than it's worth, though.
 
Rick Shepherd said:
I just run my soundcard outputs to a headphone amp that has a mute button for the monitors. The outputs from the headphone amp go on throught the amp to the monitors. It works great cuz I can mute the main monitors by the press of a button on the headphone amp, the Presonus HP4.
Click to expand...

I use my free Presonus HP4 as a feeder for headphones while I'm walking on the treadmill. In my studio, my speaker kill switch is a custom box that I built for about $10. It consists of a few pieces of wire, a project box, four 1/4" jacks, a 9v battery clip/lead, a relay, and a lighted switch.

Not only does it mute the speakers, but from across the room, I can see a red light if it is safe to record-enable a track with my Tranzport. :D
 
dgatwood said:
Yeah, but then you aren't getting the return through your board, so you can't monitor playback through the board at all, and thus, that config doesn't solve the problem of needing to be able to mute the monitors. With a TRS send/receive setup, you just drop your master faders and you're done.

Of course, if the board has effects sends and receives, you could use those to bring sound back in from the audio interface. It's probably more trouble than it's worth, though.
Click to expand...


ahhhh...I mis-understood what you were trying to do.....
 
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