Cool Edit Pro Help

TraceBell

New member
Ok so I'm kinda new to home recording. I've been using usb mics but I jus got an m-audio m track 2 and mxl 770. Everything works fine with it but when I record and play It back the quality is terrible. The vocal quality that it is picking up is horrible and even after I edit and mix it it's still terrible. Is this a mic/interface/computer/ cool edit problem? I apologize in advance if I'm been too vague. The other thing that has been going on forever in my cool edit is every recording track the quality gets progressively worse. Tracks 1 and 2 are fine, vocals recorded on those tracks are perfect but once I record on track 3 the vocals are signifcantly worse. And the track 4 is worse than 5 and then 5 is worse than 4 till you can barely even hear the vocals the quality is bad at around like track 10. I can't figure it out and no one seems to have the same problem. Sorry if these questions are annoying/ stupid just can't figure out what's wrong
thank you
 
Yep . . . your vagueness doesn't help with the diagnosis. However, I expect it is none of "mic/interface/computer/ cool edit" as such.

I expect all these bits of the recording path are all working fine. With the little information at hand, it does sound, however, like a routing problem, in that when you are recording new, you are overlaying it over old somehow. This could come from a variety of places. For example, if you are recording, and are monitoring through speakers, the mike could also be picking this up.

Or you could be doing the same thing functionally with settings on the interface or in the DAW, or both.
 
I'm guessing here but...

Cool Edit depended on the Windows mixer to control signal routing--and it was easy to default to a situation where you were recording a mix of tracks already recorded and the new stuff. Each time you re-record the original it'll get louder and soon clip/get distorted.

Or, are you by any chance saving in MP3 mode? That's lossy compression and Cool Edit converts to wave each time you open it then back to MP3 when you save. You very quickly fall over the quality cliff working this way.
 
I'm guessing here but...

Cool Edit depended on the Windows mixer to control signal routing--and it was easy to default to a situation where you were recording a mix of tracks already recorded and the new stuff. Each time you re-record the original it'll get louder and soon clip/get distorted.

Or, are you by any chance saving in MP3 mode? That's lossy compression and Cool Edit converts to wave each time you open it then back to MP3 when you save. You very quickly fall over the quality cliff working this way.

I'm saving to WAV, but I have a feeling it's a windows problem because I am new to pcs/windows and haven't messed with any audio settings. Is it also possible that my recordings are not sounding good on my new equitment because I don't have the m track drivers? (I would understand if you were laughing at me right now) thanks for you help by the way, I seriously appreciate it
 
If you know how to post screen captures of your settings and what you're doing, it might help. Hardware settings, for instance. How you're setting up routing, for instance. But doesn't the m-audio m track 2 come bundled with Ableton Live Lite? Why are you using Cool Edit if you've got Ableton?
 
Isn't cooledit a defunct program? Didn't it get subplanted by audition about 7 years ago?

Get Reaper and used the asio driver that comes with the interface.
 
You could try the M Track drivers (I have an M Track and Audition as well) but I wouldn't count on them working. The M Track drivers are ASIO and Cool Edit is so old it doesn't support ASIO, only WDM/WME. However, I've just tried my M Track on MME drivers and it's working fine...just a bit more latency than ASIO.

As others have said, Cool Edit is a VERY old piece of software (more like 12 years old for even the most recent version) and was designed to work with Windows 98 or XP. There are no guarantees it'll work with more modern operating systems.

I can understand not using Ableton...it's great for MIDI but a bit impenetrable for audio if you're used to how Cool Edit works. Reaper may be a better solution for you if you can't afford Audition CC
 
Right. Cool Edit stopped working for me on my new machine (Win7 64-bit). Still runs on my machine with XP on it. It was a nice program 15 years ago. :)
 
CEP is a great program, as is Adobe Audition who bought Cool Edit Pro from Syntrillium. I still have CEP 1.2A, 2.0 and AA 1, 1.5 and 2.0. I have AA 3 as well, but IMO version 2.0 from Adobe is the sweet spot. When Adobe got a hold of CEP they did what they do with everything... turn it into a huge, buggy, slow piece of crap.

If you have a perfectly operating DAW program, don't say goodbye to it just because it's not compatible with a new OS. F-ck Windows 7, 8, blah blah blah. You should have a dedicated machine for music recording. Keep an older machine around with XP SP2 (Not SP3) and if it ain't broke don't fix it. I can still run CEP 1.2 and for most of what I do that's all it takes. It's fast and light, and gets the job done and then some.
 
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