After that I spent some time trying to get my audio recording to work correctly on my laptop and didn't really get all that far. I managed to figure out how to use the Phantom Power in the mixer, which is really the reason I bought the mixer to start with. Then I realized that my electric guitar needs a clean SO badly, and the metal is really tarnished and gross, and I need new strings on that guitar more than I have ever needed new strings before. Fortunately I have some, I just need to find a free afternoon some weekend to re-string everything.
Ok, so I got the mic to work, and the Monster Cables I got from that dude on Craigslist are pretty awesome. But, I was getting a lot of buzzing/hissing noise out of the mixer and into the laptop and then into my headphones. So I need to isolate where the hissing is coming from. My feeling is that it is most likely the connection to the laptop rather than the signal coming from the mixer. If it's coming from the mixer, that kinda sucks. But we shall see. If it's NOT coming from the mixer, then either I need to play around with the EQs a lot, or I need to get a better input device for the laptop. Seems to me like the Griffin iMic thing I got from the dude on Craigslist is a good idea in theory, but in practice it seems to create a lot of extra background buzz/hiss noise which I really don't want in the recording. Maybe I can filter it out somehow. I tried some of the Sonic Foundry ACID filters so far, but they didn't do a great job really. We shall see.
Anyway here's the setup.
My Laptop, Mixer, and a lot of cables
The buzzing might also be from your laptop's sound card. I believe many integrated sound cards put noise on the line, especially with Dells. My brother's computer is a similar Dell and, despite lots of research, he could never record without noise.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens if you take your laptop out of the path? An external sound card may help?