(why) does my US-122 suck?!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Layla Nahar
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Layla Nahar

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Is it just me - or it it really hard to get good hot levels from a mic plugged into a US-122. Does anybody know anything I can do to get a hotter audio signal from it?

thanks,

Layla
 
Layla, what is your signal chain (mic, cables, soundcard, recording software, etc.)? An external preamp would give you a stronger signal to work with. I am not a big fan of the built-in pres (they sound cold/sterile to me) in the 122, though they are not terrible. If all else fails, a little outboard compression as an insert effect can tame transients and give you a slightly hotter signal going into the box. If you want advice on preamps and/or compressors, everyone around here has plenty of opinions. ;)
 
scrubs said:
Layla, what is your signal chain (mic, cables, soundcard, recording software, etc.)? An external preamp would give you a stronger signal to work with. I am not a big fan of the built-in pres (they sound cold/sterile to me) in the 122, though they are not terrible. If all else fails, a little outboard compression as an insert effect can tame transients and give you a slightly hotter signal going into the box. If you want advice on preamps and/or compressors, everyone around here has plenty of opinions. ;)
Click to expand...

I've got a mac powerbook G4 - I think its a pretty good sound card - I have decent cables - I spent about 24$ for a 12 ft XLR (can't remember the brand - the cable is at tim's house - I gotta get that back)
and the mike is a sure (sm?)57

For a hot signal at this point, I'm gonna take a 1/4 to 1/8 inch adaptor and just go right into my sound card. But I feel like basicaly with the US-122 I've got a kind of useless device. I already have a two port midi interface. Sigh. I just wish I had known more about so many things when I bought it. I think I will spend the next two years borrowing freinds equipment till the quality of my work is good enuf to justify a real investment. (at least now I have musical friends - I didn't have that before!)
 
I had the US-428 and the levels were pretty good but not great.

how hot are you recording? if you are recording at 24bit then you don't need to "hit the red" in order to get a good clean sound.

having said that, I didn't use the gain on the 428, I used an external pre-amp, and just used the 428 as a converter from analog/digitial to the PC via USB.

after all, for $200 how good could the gain staging be on the 122?
 
So, I'm wondering, who can really benefit from such a device? Coz it seems to me kind of useless. By the time you've invested in external pre-amps, etc, you've started to rack up some big bills, might as well go for something more professinal, less ad hoc ...

The reason I ask is that I'd like to find a person who can really benefit from this and sell it to them. Its just sitting in a box on my shelf.

ps: Yeah, I guess I could go Ebay. haven't tried that yet. I'm right near Berklee college - there must be someone there who is looking for such a thing ....
 
not for everyone, but it works for me.

I think the value of the US-122, like most USB and FireWire interfaces, is that it provides usable preamps (like I said above, they are not terrible, and I have used them to make some decent recordings), has MIDI capability for those who use MIDI, provides Analog to Digital converters that may be better than most cheap soundcards that come with computers, and they are portable (can be used with laptops for field recording).

I got one because I record on both my desktop and laptop, and, when I bought it, I had no other preamps in my collection other than those in a cheap mixer. It has worked well for me so far. I will probably get a new soundcard in the next year or so which will make this item less useful to me, but I am using it in the meantime to record my current project.

Listening to your mp3 (in the songwriting forum - nice work, btw), I take it you make mostly electronic music. Unless you are using a lot of MIDI, you probably don't need this unit. Any method you use to get sound into your computer without excess hum/noise is fine as long as you are satisfied with it. Happy recording. :)
 
is the gain staging different in the us-122 than the us-428? i never had a problem with drum machine or keyboard levels. obviously using the gain on my RNP is better than using the gain on the 428, but i got good levels.

layla what kinds of levels are you achieving? what is the peak and rsm that you achieve -6db??? -12db??? -18db???
 
Hello Crossstudio & Scrubbs

Thanks for getting back to me. Yeah, I'm currently making electronic music, but I want to bring in my voice, my acoustic guitar, and hand percussion.

So, I won't give up on this unit yet, after christmas I'll set it up again and do some more tests. (though it may be that just going right into my sound card may be the best for most things ...? I guess if I want to record my singing as I play, that's where I would really need the US-122)

ps: thanks for your nice words about my piece. I'm sitting down now to do a bit of work on creating version 2. I'm looking forward to doing it, cause I hope to learn a lot.
 
Hmm, perhaps it's the mic you're using?

My band has a US-122 and we've had nice results with it so far with vocals on mics. We were using a Shure Beta.

I'm thinking about buying a US-122 for myself, since it has MIDI, XLRs/Preamps and all.
 
Layla Nahar said:
Is it just me - or it it really hard to get good hot levels from a mic plugged into a US-122. Does anybody know anything I can do to get a hotter audio signal from it?
Click to expand...

I thought maybe it was just me, but I too fell that recordings make thru the US122 just sound bad.

Anyway have they released USB 2 drivers yet for the thing?
 
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