the most n00b question ever asked:

R

redCashion

New member
I have a problem that seems like it shouldn't be difficult to solve, and yet I can't figure it out.

I have a Delta 44 card and am recording to Samplitude. My mic is running through an Audio buddy, then i have two line outs going into the 1 and 2 of the sound card. When I record, I can see the H/W In 1/2 only showing levels on the 1, and on the master volume i have two channels of volume. I think this is all as would be expected. My problem is that after I have recorded, if I try to pan hard right, I get no signal. If I pan hard left, I do get the full sound. At even panning I seem to hear the track split pretty evenly between left and right, perhaps favoring the left a bit. Does anyone know if this is as it should be, or if I am doing something wrong? I would like to be able to pan hard to either side after doing a take.

Thanks for taking the time to read as pitiful a problem as this is :p
 
OK... The Audio Buddy has two ins and two outs. You plugged in one mic, and have both the outs going to two of the Delta 44's ins.

There seems to be no way to blend the single mic signal to both channels. So if the mic is in Input 1 it goes to Output 1, and then into, let's say, Input 1 of the Delta.

You should not be recording a stereo track; if you do you should be getting only the one side corresponding to which of the 1/2 pair you have a signal going through. (I don't get why both the L and R meters move on you unless you are also recording off the monitor mixer and getting the one actual channel bleeding into the other.) If you record it as a stereo track you should be getting, as you noted, one side full of silence, and while you're at it, instead of a mono track, you have a stereo track with twice the data it actually needs to have for no useful reason.

Record mono signals to mono tracks (select the H/W In 1/2 Left Only, or Right only, depending on which is which). Then place them in the stereo soundfield by panning the track.

Stereo tracks are for recording from a stereo source like a CD player or a stereo mic pair or the stereo out of a synth, and you wnat to retain the stereo mix of the source as it is.

I have noted that this confusion around stereo and mono tracks is a common one -- you aren't alone. I think it is confusing because the nomenclature with this computer recording stuff considers signals to be grouped in pairs -- instead of just 1, 2, 3, 4 for the Delta, we get 1/2, 1/2 L, 1/2 R, and 3/4, 3/4 L, and 3/4 R. And wav files can be stereo files as well as mono files, unlike multitrack tape machines where each physical tape track is mono, so the recording applications give us this capability. I would rather they kept the old paradigm and each track was considered as an independent mono track and it was up to you to mix it to stereo. You could still record stereo tracks just by using two mono tracks. I prefer to think that way.

It just so happens that the current issue of Electronic Musician magazine has an article on this topic which I just read in the john over the last couple of days and it's very well written. The title is "Panning for Gold," by Randy Neiman. See if you can read it at

http://industryclick.com/magazinear...aseid=9913&magazinearticleid=141955&siteid=15
 
Hey AlChuck, thanks for you reply :)

So I unplugged the second out from the Audio Buddy, since it didn't seem to be being used anyway. I also checked to make sure that I was recording in mono, and I tried again. Same thing happened, I have one mono waveform and can't pan to the right side.

So, I started wondering if maybe the Audio Buddy was defective. So I went back to my old method of recording vocals, namely running my mic into a Digitech 2000 guitar pedal (i know its sad :) ) and then into the Delta, suprise I get panning to both sides!

So does this necessarily mean that the Audio Buddy is defective? I don't see how I could be using it incorrectly since there really aren't any knobs or anything on it...

Thoughts please?
 
It sounds again like you are recording to a stereo track. The Audio Buddy has nothing to do with playback and I seriously doubt it's defective.

How are your tracks being output? Typically they should all go to either 1/2 Stereo Out or 3/4 Stereo Out. Then if the pan position is centered they should come out of each speaker equally and sound like it's in the center between the two speakers. Panning left or right should move it left or right in the stereo sound field.

ANother question, if that still doesn't get it -- what kind of cables/connectors are you using? This might be an issue.
 
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