Using N-track with a mixer and other questions

[sir_rockaby4]

Hello everyone. I am new to this site, but not to the frustrations of home digital recording. I am on a limited budget. I have N-track Studio Version 3.0.5 and Cool Edit Pro Version 2.0. on a Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop, which has a soundcard that does not have a line-in minijack. It only has one for headphones and one for mic. However, a friend successfully recorded songs from my laptop using a minidisc recorder plugged in through the headphone jack, so I'm hoping to possibly connect a mixer to my laptop through the headphone jack. Is this possible or should I not attempt? I have been thinking about buying a Creative Soundblaster Extigy external soundcard for this purpose. For the past few months I have been recording various friends. I record each track (vocal, acoustic guit, acoustic bass, backup vocal, etc.) with N-track. I record one track at a time. Sometimes weeks apart depending on time and who's available. Then I tweak each track on Cool Edit Pro. I'll add reverb, echo, dynamics processing, etc. and then save as vocal mix, bass mix, etc. I keep the original recordings for future use (hoping one day I'll truly understand mixing and mastering and will remix and rerecord). Then I'll insert each mixed track onto N-track and set volume and pan levels and then mixdown to single wave file. By the way, I record at 44100 using only the laptop mic. I have thought about connecting a mic using an impedence matching transformer to my laptop for better recording (I will find out which mics are best for what on another forum). I record in this order: rhythm guit, lead guit if any, bass, vocal, no drum. I am waiting until I have mics to record a drum kit. But, if I did have mics to record a drum kit, which order would be best? Drums first or last? I can't imagine anyone being able to drum a song without anything to follow, which leads me to my next question. I'd like to record all tracks simultaneously. What would I use? I have read that a mixer would do the trick. How do I use N-track with a mixer? If I had an inexpensive 4-track mixer I can record 1 vocal, 1 rhythm guit, 1 bass and 1 lead guit at the same time. Then I would use 3-4 tracks for the drums on the next recording. But how does N-track know to record the tracks at the same time and how do I link up track 1 from the mixer to track 1 on N-track, etc. And do I just adjust levels on the mixer and not as I normally do by watching the Recording VU-meter on N-track and adjust the record level from Volume Control on Windows XP?

I know that I threw a lot of info that does not pertain to N-track, but I hope that knowing my setup, techniques, etc. would be helpful for anyone responding with answers, corrections, suggestions. Thank you for your time and I attached a little sample of my work.

 

[Slackmaster2K]

Here's what you need to know:

1) If you can record with your laptop using the headphone jack, then it is dual-purpose. Check your documentation or go online to find it.

2) The best you can hope for with your existing soundcard is recording two tracks simultaneously (left and right = stereo). If your existing soundcard only has a mic jack, then the best you can do is one channel. It doesn't matter what mixer you hook up to it, you can only isolate as many tracks as you have inputs on your soundcard. Even if you had an 8 input soundcard, however, hooking a mixer up to it doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to isolate 8 tracks at a time unless the mixer has 8 individual outputs (it may have direct outs for each channel, or channel inserts can work to isolate mic pres...). You can also use external preamps.

Slackmaster 2000