Help needed for recording newbie...

F

Francesco Medri

New member
Hi guys!

I'm an italian guitar player that would love to start recording something... This is the first time I browse this forum, but I'm a regular at Harmony Central and some guy told me to ask here...


I've bought just today a Shure SM 57 mic, and of course I have a PC, that is not that "beast" but more or less what I need by now... My sound card is a basic Sound Blaster 128 PCI, and I have Cool Edit Pro 2.0 installed.

The trouble is: looks like I cannot record anything!!! Today, I pluged the mic into the mic in of the soundcard, and tried to set the windows mixer and Cool Edit options to get some recording, but... nothing!!! Looks like no signal is entering the sound card...

So... could you guys just teach me, step by step, how to setup more or less everything to record some crap?I mean, how to set the volumes, wave inputs and outputs and s on...

Help!!!
 
I'm nearly as newbie as you and also had problems with that kind of staff. After some research and thanking a lot the help that this forum brought me I've resolved loads of problems.

There's a pdf manual around the web that belongs to cool edit pro 1.2, but resultsvery suitable to learn the latest version because they are almost the same. Get it and learn step by step the using of this huge program.

About your question I would say two things:

1)Your new shure mic is a great mic but belongs to dynamics class and need a preamp before being plugged to your computer.

but,
2)Instead of this, I didn't have a preamp as you and make my dynamic mic sound into cool edit, so I would say that there is a little problem of configuration on your sound card (I have that card and sure it works!). Try to open the audio mixer of your sound blaster and watch what can be happening with the mic in.

I'll repeat I'm a Newbie and not too experimented but hope I have helped you and not pushed you into a deeper abism.

Be happy.
 
There could be some kind of trouble with the soundcard software, I've tried to open the SB mixer and it doesn't work anymore...

I'm now trying to d'load drivers, but they're a pain to find out!!!
 
Hm, go to the Options tab in Multitrack View and then click "Device Order". Go into the "Recording devices" tab and make sure your soundcard is selected to do the recording by bringing it over to the next box. Now, under the R S M buttons, go into the little gray "Rec" box and select it for recording.

Hope I could be of service.
 
I'm finally getting some sound recorded, but even seting the mic level to the max, and playing the amp at a reasonable volume, I can get just a whisper recorded... how's that???
 
a condenser? what for?

hey francesco, you really need an external preamp to get that 57 deliver the sound it can achieve
then you would have something like this
sm57 > PreAmp > SoundCard's Line In and into cool edit
you really get good results with that

go to the music hardware store and ask for good preamps

good luck

memo :cool:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top