Underwhelmed at the moment...any ideas?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dionna Blue
  • Start date Start date
Dionna Blue

Dionna Blue

Accentuate the positive.
Ok so I got my stuff today http://www.music123.com/Pro-Audio/R...ro3-Recording-Package.site7prod486268.product and here's how it's goin so far...
Setting everything up was easy enough I didn't really have to read anything except that I had plugged the speakers into my laptop instead of into Alesis with the patch cable but I fixed that right off. And then the fun began...
No sound in Cubase. Ok well I'll go to audacity just to make sure everything is connected right. Mic works in Audacity, but no sound from headphones. A couple hours later I finally got Cubase up and running - had to map my inputs and select the devices in the AISO driver menu and some other stuff that in my mind should be automatic.

So now we're ready to work right?? Wellll not exactly. My mic barely makes a sound unless the gain is at max on Alesis and then I hear that white noise. I can't hear it on the track, but I can hear it in silence so I know it's there. Hopefully the pre-amp and a better mic cable will improve that. Also, I don't know if there are settings in Cubase that would help?

As for the mics - I'm not impressed with the MXL V63M or the Shure 48-LC. I'm not sure what all the hype is about...to me they perform only as well as you would hope any fairly decent mic would. Again, I may see some improvement when the ART Tube and other mic cable arrive.

The Nady shockmount barely fit the MXL, I had to really cram it in there but it's lined with soft fabric so it doesn't scratch the mic. Two of the rubber bands look like they've been repaired and have what almost looks like electrical tape wrapped around them! What the...!!! I will never by another Nady product. It was only 15 bucks but come on...a repaired rubber band! The headphones and monitors are also probably just enough to get me off the ground. I'm pretty sure I will take advantage of the 45 day return policy and trade this stuff in for better gear. For $275 bucks I feel like I got my money's worth...and as we all know...275 doesn't get you much these days.
 
Most people spend over $275 just on an interface. Make sure your phantom power is on - you should be able to get a decent level from that mic. You want it to come into Cubase
at about -18dB so it's not real loud (you do not want to record too hot), you can then normalize the signal in the track. The Alesis pre amps are pretty quiet until you get past 75% volume so don't push your pre past that.

A decent pair of monitors usually costs $300+ so I wouldn't expect much there. I have never used or even heard of the Shure 48-LC but Shure usually makes decent vocal mics. Getting a good mic for your voice can be a complicated matter.

You might just need to tweak your levels some. But you should get a decent level with the MXL + Phantom Power -> headphones.
 
Phantom power is definitely on. I just discovered that the mic is much louder in audacity than in Cubase so there's probably something in Cubase that needs tweaking. However I'm having latency issues with audacity so that won't work either at the moment. I'm only recording vocals to be mixed by the producer, so I'm not too concerned about the monitors. I already knew they were pretty weak but aside from that I really don't like the sound of the mic even in audacity. It actually sounds worse than my video chat mic! It's rather muddy and there's no crispness at all. At this point, I'm still working out the kinks so I won't make my final decision until I'm sure I'm getting the most out of this setup but I'm pretty sure this ain't the mic for me.

There has to be more to it than what I'm getting, judging by all the rave reviews of the Alesis and the V63M. Or maybe none of those people ever recorded in a real professional studio?? lol Of course, I'm not expecting that kind of quality, but a clear mic is not optional.

Did I mention that I'm not a patient person? Two hours of setup and troubleshooting only to end up with crappy sound totally zapped my energy.

(Missing those days at Jam Betta studios in the west village.)
 
I feel your pain. My first time setting up cubase took me 2 days so 2 hours is pretty quick. Like arcadeko said, $200 isn't much so you have to expect the quality to suffer a bit. If you've spent a lot of time in a real studio you probably have higher expectations than a lot of home recorders.
 
Dionna Blue said:
Two of the rubber bands look like they've been repaired and have what almost looks like electrical tape wrapped around them! What the...!!! I will never by another Nady product. It was only 15 bucks but come on...a repaired rubber band!
Click to expand...

I don't care for Nady...but AFA the "rubber bands"....that's the way they are supposed to be.

What you call "repaired" is simply where the ends are joined and held together by a metal clip that is pressed on.
The "electrical tape" is actually heat-shrink tubing, intended to seal the connection and keep the metal clip from rubbing on your mics.
 
Well I feel better about that but it looks awful and they never show that part in any of the pics of shock mounts. lol I guess I just never noticed cuz they're always hidden behind the pop filter. lol
 
TetraFish said:
I feel your pain. My first time setting up cubase took me 2 days so 2 hours is pretty quick. Like arcadeko said, $200 isn't much so you have to expect the quality to suffer a bit. If you've spent a lot of time in a real studio you probably have higher expectations than a lot of home recorders.
Click to expand...

Well my setup is probably simpler than yours, idunno. And yea, there is a certain percentage of studio quality I'm looking for...maybe half? The almost 5 star reviews everywhere I checked on the V63M are wayyyy off...at least for my voice and setup. Right now I'm at about 2/5 stars for sound quality and I really need to get above the 3.5 mark before the polish of any software. I'm hoping the preamp and better cable will at least give me a 1/2 boost so I can at least get some usable work out of this setup to cover my return shipping fee. lol
Yea I'm cheap...and? Often it pays off...sometimes it doesn't. lol (this is 1 of those times)
 
Dionna...

Back to your first thread, I said you didn't need a new external soundcard but that if you were worried about quality, then the next thing on the list might be knowledge rather than a new piece of gear. There are any number of reasons, your gear aside, why you wouldn't be getting sufficient quality that relate to your use of the gear.

And really, for $200... you've got a nice little starter package. That's all it is.

I've spent tens of thousands of dollars over the last 15 years on instruments and recording gear, and I still have to work out how to get it all to sound good, every time.

It takes time, and knowledge.
 
Yup, I totally get that. I really just expected a decent sound from the mic. The other stuff was sort of a throw-in in my mind. Knowledge is what I'm trying to gain through this process so I'm still going to work with this setup to make sure I am getting the most out of it before I get something else and don't know how to use that to its full potential.

Armistice said:
Dionna...

Back to your first thread, I said you didn't need a new external soundcard but that if you were worried about quality, then the next thing on the list might be knowledge rather than a new piece of gear. There are any number of reasons, your gear aside, why you wouldn't be getting sufficient quality that relate to your use of the gear.

And really, for $200... you've got a nice little starter package. That's all it is.

I've spent tens of thousands of dollars over the last 15 years on instruments and recording gear, and I still have to work out how to get it all to sound good, every time.

It takes time, and knowledge.
Click to expand...
 
But that still won't stop me from shopping around for other stuff NOW. lol

Armistice said:
Dionna...

Back to your first thread, I said you didn't need a new external soundcard but that if you were worried about quality, then the next thing on the list might be knowledge rather than a new piece of gear. There are any number of reasons, your gear aside, why you wouldn't be getting sufficient quality that relate to your use of the gear.

And really, for $200... you've got a nice little starter package. That's all it is.

I've spent tens of thousands of dollars over the last 15 years on instruments and recording gear, and I still have to work out how to get it all to sound good, every time.

It takes time, and knowledge.
Click to expand...
 
Ok yall it's gettin better...fingers crossed!
 
Now you have learned - don't rush into 'package deals'. Unless the package is custom-made FOR YOU, it's a bunch of stuff that the seller can make a profit on. The Alesis is a $99 interface, I would not expect its pre-amps to be all that great.
 
For the price that looks like a nice start... 2 hours is a very small time investement in learning new gear especially a new DAW ... your gonna have to slow down get some herbal tea on and RTFM :) Don't waste money on snakeoil mic cables unless the one you have is faulty it should not add or take anything away from your sound.
 
Don't off that mxl just yet.

I'd be surprised if a u87 impressed you with your current setup and expertise.

That's not meant to sound nasty at all; I just mean a lot of people blame and upgrade their microphones, and often the mic is the part of the chain that doesn't need upgraded or tweaked.

I didn't really like my re20 or sm7b through digi 003 pres. I was sooo disappointed at one stage, but i love them now that I've upgraded preamps.

Get to know your gear. Experiment with everything, direction and distance of the mic, different rooms, placement within the room,
placement of monitors in the room, acoustic treatment etc
but most of all, have fun :)
 
Thanks for all the support Guys. I'm not throwing in the towel just yet and it's much better now that I figured out how to eq with Cubase. uggg I'm really hating that program. It will just randomly stop sending sound through my headphones, and I have to restart the program.

I consider this setup like my first car...I learned to drive on a stick-shift so I'm sure I can figure this out. lol I've since moved on to my fabulous Monte Carlo but it took some trial and error (like that dud Grand Prix!!) But anywho, I'm definitely figuring it out.

This mic has a very small sweet spot and it sounds best when I'm only about 3" away. Outside of that, the sound quality drops off pretty quickly. I had already ordered a Live Wire (I think that's the brand) XLR cable because the reviews said the ones in the pkgs can be spotty. I'll swap it and see if there is a difference but I'm not getting any noise from this one so I think it's ok.

I wouldn't say I rushed into this package but the learning curve seems to be more of an obstacle than the actual equipment. I am seeing steady improvements and I have usable vocals at this point so that's cool until I save up for an upgrade.

The speakers are BOOTY but I already knew that!! There's no fixing that. lol M-Audio StudioPro3...awful. The Sennheiser headphones seem ok but I haven't compared them with any other speakers yet.
 
That's cool. Glad it's working out for you.

Try to learn how to eq with the room and the position of everything within it if you can.
Obviously eq plugs are great and pretty much essential for a lot of stuff but it's easy to loose the emphasis on capturing a great sound over fixing a bad one.

You say cubase randomly stops sound through your cans. Is the session still playing back on screen, or does the playback crash? Do the speakers make sound?

Your session might just be freezing over too low a buffer setting or something.

Sounds like you're on your way! Enjoy it!
 
It still plays, meters going and all, just no sound. I restart the program and it works fine. It only does this when I'm just playing back, it hasn't done it while recording.

I'm a singer so I pretty much just want my voice to sound like my voice which seems easy enough but I was losing a lot of resonance before I found the e button. lol I've done more live singing than studio recording so I'm not big on effects and other artificial enhancements. I don't even know how to apply compression yet. lol


Steenamaroo said:
That's cool. Glad it's working out for you.

Try to learn how to eq with the room and the position of everything within it if you can.
Obviously eq plugs are great and pretty much essential for a lot of stuff but it's easy to loose the emphasis on capturing a great sound over fixing a bad one.

You say cubase randomly stops sound through your cans. Is the session still playing back on screen, or does the playback crash? Do the speakers make sound?

Your session might just be freezing over too low a buffer setting or something.

Sounds like you're on your way! Enjoy it!
Click to expand...
 
Dionna Blue said:
I don't even know how to apply compression yet. lol
Click to expand...

That's probably a good thing for now. If you learn proper mic technique as you go, there'll be less need for it anyway. :)

I can't really help with your audio dropouts but maybe someone else can.
Good luck.
 
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