A little tech help Please - Audacity

MarkM
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 8:26 am
Status: Offline

Tue Feb 15, 2011 9:41 am

Hello all. Need some help here. I've been using audacity for a while now and have had no problems with a previous set up which included a mic directly connected to my computer using a USB connetion. This was easy enough to get a single track going in audacity. However now I'm complicating it a bit and spent entirely too much time yesterday trying to figure this one out. I currently have Two mics connected to an M-Audio Fast Track Pro (USB connection to the computer). One mic for the guitar and the other for vocals. In audacity I can either set up a stereo track or split a single track which really is a stereo track as well. What is happening is that I'm getting the guitar on the left channel and the vocals on the right. OK so at least I know I'm getting the thing to work and getting a clean sound. However what I want is to essentially get the guitar and the vocals to come out of both speakers. In the past if I recorded the guitar first and then overdubbed the vocals on to a seperate track that is what I got. How can I assign each mic to a different track and record the vocals and guitar at the same time? More basically put, how do I get both the vocals and the guitar to come out through both speakers when I record at the same time? I hope this explains what I'm asking. You're help is appreciated.



MarkM


snipe
Posts: 0
Joined: Mon Mar 30, 2009 12:42 pm
Status: Offline

Tue Feb 15, 2011 11:30 am

Mark,

I wish I could help, but I dont any software yet. How do you like Audacity? Would you recomend it? I will watch this thread. Am interested in what solution you come up with.
Thanks,
Mike


User avatar
skaladar
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2010 12:45 pm
Status: Offline

Tue Feb 15, 2011 12:05 pm

Hi Mark

I use Audacity but mostly for editing, not the what you are doing so I am just taking a stab here. I'm also not very familiar with the Fast Track Pro interface. Since your question is about Audacity maybe this will work. The mike and guitar are both mono devices and the Fast Track interface is mixing them. Have you tried setting the preferences for the recording device(s) from stereo to mono? Click Edit > Preferences and select Devices. The default number of channels for recording is 2 (stereo) but if you change that to 1 (mono) for each device in use your vocal and instrument input shouldn't be assigned to right-left channels.

Image

Hope that helps

Ken


ffsooo3
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 6:35 am
Status: Offline

Tue Feb 15, 2011 1:54 pm

I don't believe you can assign a specific input device (guitar or mike or whatever) to a specific track in Audacity when using a USB M-Audio device.

As you noted, you will get the guitar on one-side of the track and the mike on the other side on the track. You can then "split track to mono" and get 2 mono tracks and then use the pan slider to center the sound or place it anywhere in the stereo spectrum.


ffsooo3
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 6:35 am
Status: Offline

Tue Feb 15, 2011 2:11 pm

BTW Is there a mono switch on your M-Audio device?


MarkM
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 8:26 am
Status: Offline

Tue Feb 15, 2011 8:00 pm

Thanks all.

Ken that was my settng as I double checked it. Thanks.

Daryl - I did figure out how to splt the track and then collapse it to mono. I guess that will have to do for now. It's a bummer that I can record two seperate tracks at the same time though. I did get a copy of Appleton's Live 8 software with the M-Audio device but its a bit out there. I mean I consider myself a fairly bright guy but I got the wrong engineering degree to figure this one out. I'll have to find an easier software package that can do simultaneuos track recording so I can get the guitar and vocals. Ideally I'd like to get the guitar as a stereo track and then have the vocals square in the middle of the pan. Oh well..................


MarkM


ffsooo3
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 6:35 am
Status: Offline

Wed Feb 16, 2011 7:40 am

Regarding Appleton Live 8: Go to YouTube and search for "Appleton Live Tutorial". There's a ton of information there. I had the same issue with ProTools and found that Audacity was way easier to learn and work with (although Audacity isn't a good or as powerful as ProTools).

But with Audacity you can get your guitar in stereo and your voice dead center quite easily. Split the stereo track to mono and then set the vocal track panned to the center. Next select the guitar track and edit->duplicate. That will give you a 3rd track (2nd guitar track). Go to the start of one of the guitar tracks and do generate->silence and specify 00h00m00.025s (adding 25 milliseconds of silence to the track). Then pan one guitar track hard left and the other hard right.


Post Reply Previous topicNext topic